032. The Eyre Affair (2001).

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (2001).

          
 A very strange book where the boundary between

reality and imagination and everything is completely and masterfully thrown away,

creating one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read.

Honestly, this book is insanely entertaining.

  

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layers. – Thursday Next.   A heroin. A war hero. Brave, intelligent, reasonable, over all, a perfect agent and probably the only person in this book who is not afraid of Jack Shitt and the Goliath Cooperation.

She is a Literatec officer who is working for the department which mainly deals with the forgery and thievery of literature which, in this world, is regarded as menacing and dangerous as terrorism. 

Her job consists of fairly regular, not to mention safe routine of checking out books and paper works until her uncle Mycroft invented the way to get inside the book. Then everything gets much more complex.

Later in the series, she gains an ability to get inside the book at her own will and stays inside the Bookworld for a few years patrolling the book world, making sure every characters does what they supposed to do.

Mycroft Next.   Thursday’s uncle. A brilliant inventor and somewhat-mad scientist with conscience.

A true genius who according to his wife Polly, got regularly kidnapped by foreign power or another during 60’s and 70’s for his brain.

His latest invention which allows a person to go inside the book by opening portal with worms(?) is the backbone of this Thursday Next book.

Later in the series, tired with everything, he decides to live inside the Sherlock Holmes books making himself second Mycroft in the Baker st.

With his brilliant wife, Polly, he has two sons who are dumb and dumber. The biggest mystery in family history. 

Jack Schitt. He is the head of Advanced weapons Division with eight billion annual budget with Goliath Cooperation which runs British empire since the last war. Another word, one of the most powerful men.

Short, chubby and annoying as hell, he is “villain” written all over him, but actually  belongs to the good side, sort of.

Acheron Hades. As the name indicates, he is a genius criminal mastermind with no empathy.

He lives for two things and two things only: Fame and Money.

He actually achieves his two goals in early part of this book. He is the most wanted man on this planet (fame) after stealing priceless manuscript from museum (money) and killing a few agents on his way out.

However, he doesn’t stop there. He wants to be the greatest criminal ever and also becomes the richest man on the Planet at the same time. So he kidnaps Mycroft and steals his invention and starts also kidnapping famous characters from literary treasures for huge ransom. 

What I mean is, can you imagine “Romeo and Juliet” without Juliet? How much you will pay if someone asking for ransom for her? If she got killed, the original story of Shakespeare’s play will be forever altered, right? How much do you think she is worth? Billions, easily. And that’s what Hades is doing. Goes inside the book and brings the literary character back to our world and kill them if he doesn’t get paid.

  Sounds crazy but it actually works well with all the characters and story flow. Really.

Others. Every single character in this book is either not normal or hilarious. Or not humans. Or all of it combines together. 

Hades henchmen are all psychopaths. Thursday’s co-workers are all hilarious or not humans. Goliath’s agents are all so mean and stupid. None of Thursday’s family members are normal. Especially her father Colonel Next who is traveling back and forth through out time to fix the glitches of history-matters for no other reasons than that he can actually do it(Dr. Who with military training). The crazy thing is because he is traveling with time machine all the time which apparently affects his metabolism or something, whenever Thursday meets him, he is always in different age!! Sometimes,  a lot younger then her!!

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lace. –Mainly, Swindon, England. A small town (year is 1986) where Thursday was born and raised with her two brothers.

Thursday works in a small branch of SpecialOP office in Swindon.

However, once the story gets going, she is literary everywhere and nowhere: something to do with time traveling and book/fantasy traveling.

The definition of linear time line (normal time) doesn’t exit in this book. Combine with the fact that Thursday can walk into the books(inside) and jump book to book with no difficulty(something she can’t explain why), this book gets really complex, not to mention, again, insanely entertaining!!

I’ll give you an example. Later in the series, after spending two years inside books, Thursday come back home (reality!) with Hamlet (yes, the HAMLET) and has a tea with the icily polite Prussian gentleman named Herr Otto Bismarck(1815-1898), the Iron Chancellor, man of “iron and brood”, courtesy of his dad(time traveler)’s intention of sorting out some kind of historic questions. Hilarious.

Compare to this, “Back to the future” is kid’s play.

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lot. – First half. A very rare manuscript is stolen from the high security museum without a trace.  The man responsible for the crime is Acheron Hides, the most wanted man in the world and Thursday is on his track with fellow agents.

Second half. After a spectacular mass-up, Thursday is retired (?) in her hometown Swindon with supposedly same old, boring job. 

But the small, quite town is not what it used to be and now filled with everything imaginably possible! : Kidnappers, murderers, secret society psychopaths, Government-backed cooperation agents, Vampires, werewolves, time machine etc, etc….

On top of that, Acheron is back and trying really hard to live up to his billing as the best criminal mind in history by committing hideous crimes of kidnapping/killing literary characters, altering the storyline of the classic books forever! by using Mycroft’s book traveling invention. 

Can Thursday stop him before it’s too late?

Also, there is small subplot of Thursday’s attempt to bring back her relationship with her ex.
 

And remember this. All above is just a basic storyline of the book. A small piece of iceberg. It’s what the writer puts in between the plots matters. He jammed the entire book with so much new ideas and crazy imagination, you should probably read it couple of times to appreciate the full value of it. Fantastic for book club, I think.

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erdict. –Jasper Fforde creates amazing world with his truly remarkable imagination: The world literary ruled by literature. Renaissancites (?) are causing riots. Surrealists form political parties. Shakespeare is regarded as a religion so every hotel room has equipped with (mandatory) complete works of the  master.

On top of that, it is also filled with all sort of imaginary creatures (dodo birds is the men’s best friends, not dogs, and smarter than dogs, too ). 

I dare to compare him to the other ridiculously imaginative writer: Douglas Adams. Both have wild imagination and tremendous talent to create the universe based sorely on their brain-work. And jokes, lots of them.

Only thing missing in this book is a spot light!!

Jasper Fforde needs more recognition!!

Fanfare of trumpets should sound for Jasper Fforde for his great work!!