The Eyre Affair

This is my first Jasper Fforde and I think an early work of his. I took it up as I was looking for something comedic after a heavier read and this appeared popular. I had trouble for much of it. Fforde is trying so self-consciously hard to be clever and witty that the imaginative story suffers for it. I was prepared to cut him some slack and continued and it improved from about the half way point.

It's a time travel novel where somebody is going back into original manuscripts of classic novels and removing characters. Thursday Next is the agent who is tracking down the bad guy. Her weird name is only one of many such unfunny puns. Other people are Sturmey Archer and Bowden Cable, both items of bicycle engineering. Yep, painful, no?

There are two themes running through the story. One is an ongoing discussion between Next and other characters about who really wrote the plays of Shakespeare. It's an oft repeated discussion point. Second theme is the story of Jane Eyre, especially the ending that people did not like. I hadn't read Jane Eyre but it sounded false to me.

As the book came to an end Fforde's finest humour came to the fore. The real author of Shakespeare's plays becomes known, although only to Next. And the ending of Jane Eyre is resolved to everybody's satisfaction in a great plot twist.