The Eyre Affair (2001)

I was disappointed by this book. The premise had such promise. But rather than literary wit, it offers literary (and not-so-literary) gags. It lacks the charm and depth of, say, a Douglas Adams or Christopher Moore novel. An entertaining read, but I won't be reading the others in the series. ( )

Thursday Next's England has magic and imagination, but I was disappointed overall. The basic plot is that an evil guy, aptly named Archeron Hades, has stolen a Dickens manuscript and is changing the book by removing characters. There was also some significant interaction with the characters in Jane Eyre. Creative, right? Lead character, Thursday Next, is a special operative in the literary division. Her co-workers and family, especially her time-travelling father, minister brother, and inventor uncle were fun, but her romantic interlude was dreadful. There were too many characters and the pace was too slow. My favorite parts were the weekly drama performances of Richard III in Swindon, with audience participation (think Rocky Horror Picture Show), and I liked the sophomoric character names, like Jack Schitt and Paige Turner. I will look to other Fforde books, bot this series. ( )

Oh, this book was quite thrillin, in a laid-back, topsy-turvy, read-other-books sort of way, and I loved it. ( )

This was another one of my series-sampling audio listens, to see if I might want to pursue it in print someday.

Audio Narration
The narrator is Susan Duerden. She was ok, but not a favorite. My biggest issues were with her voicing of some of the male characters. There were some who registered in my ears more like “little old lady” than anything else. Then there were one or two who didn’t sound at all male to me (not even “female pretending to be male”), yet sometimes she would follow up their dialogue with a more male sounding “he said” (or similar) than what she had used in the actual dialogue.

I think it wasn’t as bad as I’m making it sound, I followed it easily enough, but there were several jarring moments. I may have had a lot more trouble with it earlier in the year when I had even less audio listening experience.

Story
When the book first started, I thought it was going to be a time travel story. There is some time travel, I expect it will play a larger role later in the series, but it doesn’t take up too much of this book’s plot. It does show up long enough to create a few of your typical time travel paradoxes, but I’ve learned to brace myself for that as soon as I get the first whiff of time travel.

The setting is odd, but interesting. It’s sort of set in Great Britain in the 1980’s, but it’s a steampunky alternate history where literature seems to be of great interest to most of the public and it seems like nearly everybody is prepared to debate the classics at the drop of a hat. History is completely messed up, no doubt due to that pesky time travel, although this story doesn’t delve into that much.

A good chunk of the plot, and the part I enjoyed the most, involves the classic book Jane Eyre, as you might have guessed from the title. It takes a while for that plot to come to the forefront, so it’s difficult to hint at the plot without spoilers. Although I think one could follow things easily enough without being familiar with Jane Eyre, I’m not sure the story would be as entertaining. Also, this book completely spoils the story of Jane Eyre, all the way through to the ending, so I definitely wouldn’t recommend it to somebody who has plans to read that book and doesn’t want to know the story in advance. There are many other classics mentioned also, and a lot of discussion about William Shakespeare, but Jane Eyre has the biggest impact on the plot. Or it might be more accurate to say, the plot has the biggest impact on Jane Eyre.

I wasn’t sure about this book at first. The first half was slow for me, and I got restless listening to it, especially after the previous two audiobooks that I’d enjoyed so much. It grew on me though, and I really enjoyed the Jane Eyre parts. I especially loved the moment when I finally understood how the events in this book and the real ending of Jane Eyre were going to tie together, and I had fun seeing all of that play out as expected. The part in my spoiler tags earned this book an extra half star.

There were other fun parts to the story, including the literary references when I understood them. I’m glad I didn’t read this a few years ago when I had fewer classics under my belt. The characters were ok. I liked the main character, but wasn't attached. The bad guys were the over-the-top, moustache-twirling sorts. There is an obnoxiously angsty romance that did nothing for me except annoy me, and I didn’t think it did anything for the story. It didn’t take up too much page time, though. The main story is wrapped up well enough without any cliff hangers or major open questions, but there are a couple of big dangling threads.

I’m rating this at 3.5 stars and rounding down to 3 on Goodreads. I’m marking it as a “maybe” for following up in print. It’s an interesting setting and the writing shows promise, but I have a lower tolerance for time travel illogic which I expect to play a larger role in future books, and I’m not sure the setting itself wouldn’t get tiresome before long. ( )

The premise seemed like something I would enjoy, but the execution was a little too bananas for my liking. There were a handful of pleasing elements--the wild Baconians and the John Milton convention, for examples. And, yes, for anyone who has read Jane Eyre, this is a cool ad extra tie-in. Overall, however, it served only to while away a couple hours on my long flight. ( )