The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde

When I was in my mid-teens, I discovered Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.  It quickly became a favorite book of mine, and one that I read every year or so in the spring time (it’s become part of my personal literary tradition).  So, while wandering through Chapters, my eye was immediately drawn to my latest read, The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde, and my curiosity was peaked.  I know the story of JE so well, that I’m always curious to see how others view it, and how they would use in for inspiration.

The Eyre Affair is set in 1980s England in a historical stream very different from the one we lived through; in Fforde’s world, the Crimean War is entering its 132 year, the state bureaucracy is built on almost 30 levels of Special Operative departments, werewolves and vampires wander amongst the people, time travel is de rigueur, and a whole host of other pieces of our known history have change (notably, those pieces related to Churchill, Wellington, the Nazis, etc).  The main character in The Eyre Affair is Thursday Next, a LiteraTech, that is a SpecOps-27, one of the bureaucratic cogs assigned to crimes against literature; fraud, forgeries, misrepresentations, etc.  When a copy of the original manuscript of Charles Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit goes missing, Next is called in to investigate.  What follows is an adventure in time and (literary) space as Next works to protect the beloved literary work Jane Eyre from a mad-man who is bent on reeking havoc for the sake of having some fun.

This book is so far from the average read (in many ways) that it is almost indescribable.  To start off with, Fforde has taken such a very non-flappable approach to rewriting our shared history that he has to be commended; I found it completely believable that dodo birds have become a popular personal pet, no matter what genetic splicing accident they were afflicted with.  Not only did Fforde mess with the readers’ accepted reality of history, he also bent our understanding of the physical world; an invisible car?  Sure.  Totally believable.  But what I appreciated the most was Fforde’s creation of a society that placed such a high premium on its literary tradition.  An entire government department (with regional offices!) dedicated to ensuring the consistency and veracity of literature?  I would happily live in a world where time vortexes can open up on a freeway if I could live in a culture that so treasured the written word so much.  This ability to capture the imagination of the reader is capped off with an unctuous writing style; almost like the whipped cream on a slice of pie, the foundations of the book are strong, but accented by the skills of the writer in forming beautiful turns-of-phrase and chains-of-thought.

While the plot and writing style are unique, where Fforde really hits his stride is in creating his characters.  Thursday Next is a no-nonsense operative with a whole host of skills at her disposal, and a whole host of baggage that comes with her everywhere which she can’t seem to shake.  Her nemesis, Acheron Hades, would be a lovable rogue, if he weren’t so bent on creating havoc and destruction for no purpose other than to live up to his name.  Next’s coworkers, family and friends all have their own personal backgrounds, history, and quirks that, while not fully explained, are presented so calmly and clearly, that you feel like you know their personal histories without actually having been given anything of the sort.  Most interestingly of all, however, is the way that Fforde makes literary characters come to life.  I won’t say more on that aspect of this book, but trust me – it’s amazingly, creatively, and uniquely done.

So, final verdict?  Oh my god, read this book.  This book was a real book-hangover read for me; I’m still trying to extract myself from the world that Fforde has created.  A large part of my wants to rush over to my local Chapters and pick up the rest of the books in the series, and that’s definitely something I’ll be doing this week.  And what higher recommendation can I give?  In a world where we’re all busy to the extreme (and have no ChronoGaurd to help us sort things out), I’m desperate to give away my time and money to spend more time in the world that Fforde has created.  I can’t say it enough: go out, and read this book!

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, by Kate Summerscale

I often get caught by surprised by my purchases at Chapters.  I’ll pick up a book from a shelf, think to myself ‘hun, that sounds like an interesting plot,’ and it’s not until I get home that I realize it’s a work of non-fiction.  That’s exactly what happened with my latest read, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, by Kate Summerscale.  But, just like the last time I did this (with The Witness House), I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed the work, even though I was expecting something completely different.

As a non-fiction, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher recounts the events surrounding the brutal murder of three year-old Saville Kent in rural England in 1860.  Saville was apparently taken from his bed in the middle of the night, murdered, and his body dropped into the servant’s out-house.  The crime, committed in Victorian England, was shocking for its brutality, but more so for the fall-out.  The local police, at a loss to figure out what happened, appealed to Scotland Yard to send out a detective to undertake an independent investigation in hopes of leading to the murdered.  Enter Detective Inspector Jonathan Whicher.

As Summerscale points out, while the crime itself was shocking, perhaps the most upsetting part of the whole fiasco for the general public was the way in which the private life and the sanctity of the English country-gentleman’s home was destroyed in the following investigation.  Whicher’s arrival on-scene led to a lot of uncomfortable questions for the family.  As it turns out, Mr. Kent was married to the second Mrs. Kent, who was Saville’s mother.  The first Mrs. Kent’s children were still living in the home with their father, step-mother and half-siblings, but they were doing so in serious discord, almost as if there were second-class family members.  As Whicher begins unraveling the relationships and history of everyone involved, several ugly truths come to light which make it clear that the Kents were not living the ideal Victorian family-life everyone had believed.  

The problem with Whicher’s investigation is that it was hampered by the same Victorian ideals that the Kents tried to portray; the local police had made assumptions about the family dynamics, they were uncomfortable asking ‘delicate’ questions of the women in the household, and they trusted in the gentlemanliness of Mr. Kent.  When Whicher arrived on scene, he was forced to re-trace the steps of the local police (while dealing with their hostility) during which he recognized multiple gaps and problems that the original investigation had created.  While Whicher, a long time (and highly talented) detective formulated a theory on the crime, there was no way of proving it, and the case went ‘cold’ for many years.  Summerscale does, in the end, reveal what happened to young Saville Kent (who is almost forgotten in the rat’s nest of truth and lies that Whicher uncovers), but I still found it hard to believe the case’s outcome – and I think Summerscale does too.  And no, I’m not going to tell you who done it.

If the murder reads like a who done it to you, that’s because, as Summerscale points out, it was the inspiration for the modern detective story.  The drama surrounding the Kent family was widely reported in the press, and many aspects of the crime ended up a plot points or character-basis for works by the likes of Dickens and Collins.  In fact, Dickens was a contemporary and something of a friend of Whicher.  While I found the parallels that Summerscale drew to the literary detectives and plots interesting, I only found it interesting the first time; I think it’s a major flaw in this work that Summerscale repeatedly goes back to pointing out how some aspect of the case influenced some author’s plot.  It takes away from the flow of the story and become repetitive very quickly.

While Summerscale does beat the literary connection to death (that seems to be bordering on a bad pun – apologies), the other aspect she touches on is the dynamic of the Victorian family and household.  I was familiar with the concept through my own studies, but it was interesting to see how the ideal of the private sphere was viewed by the population when it was suddenly thrust into the public sphere, as it was for the Kents through the ‘media’s’ fascination with the case.  It seems to me that Summerscale could have spent more time investigating this dynamic, and less time rehashing her assertions that the Kent case served as literary fodder in order to strengthen the work.

So, final verdict?  Definitely read this book.  Summerscale’s writing style and the manner in which she presents the facts of the Saville Kent case is fast-paced and well written.  While it may be non-fiction, it reads like a good old-fashioned who done it that will have you trying to guess at the motives of the suspects, and all the while you’ll be trying to determine who the real culprits and the real victims are.  Summerscale took a topic that was interesting and engaging enough to be a fictional work, but presented it in a non-fiction format that bridged the gap; I don’t for a minute regret picking this work up, and I encourage everyone to give it a read.

A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens

This is how I imagine things went between Charles Dickens and his publisher during discussion around A Christmas Carol:

Charles Dickens: Good morning my fine man!  I hope I find you well and enjoying rude health on this fine and glorious morn!

Publisher: Um, yeah, good morning Chuck.  Have a seat.

CD: Why thank you, kind sir!  Your generosity as a host is quite enchanting and all-encompassing.  Now, before you ask – as I am sure you would, for any good host would, and you’re a magnificent host – I don’t require any sort of libation this morning: no need for tea, coffee, snuff, or anything of the stronger nature.  I found this charmingly quaint little coffee house not twenty steps from my lodgings this morning and –

P: Yeah, Chuck, this is what we need to talk about.

CD: Pardon me, good sir?  What seems to be the problem?

P: I just read your draft of A Christmas Carol, Chuck.  It’s 1,700 pages.  I thought we had talked about this – you were supposed to submit a short story that could be published over the Christmas season to boost our winter sales.

CD: But this is a short story!  I laboriously edited it down from an original page count of 2,300!  I found myself moved by the muses to describe the state of Scrooge’s home and person in a loquacious way, but I chose to limit my own pen with the judicious eye of an editor.

P: What you don’t get Chuck, is that people are busy this time of year – gooses don’t cook themselves, wassail bowls need to be refilled, to say nothing of the hours they’ve got to work to afford those geese and bowls.  We wanted something short and pithy that could be read to the family while the pudding steamed.  This is too much.

CD: I must protest!  My art is what it is, and….

P: Let’s be honest here, Chuck.  You made a fabulous deal with us when you first joined our stable of writers – we pay you by the word.

CD: … I do not consider monetary recompense when I craft my characters – do you think the Ghost of Christmas Present was influenced by any thought of worldly gain?  

P: Yes, yes I do.

CD: [Beat] Fine.  How many pages do you want?

P: Keep it under 100 and we’ll be fine.

CD: On it.

Aaaannnnddd scene…

So, how do you write a review for a story that everyone is familiar with?  You don’t – if you were raised after the beginning of the capture of images on film, you’ve seen one rendition of A Christmas Carol or another in your lifetime.  I do recommend that you read the original though – it’s decent, and less wordy than I was expecting.  But if you’re just looking to relive the story during this holiday season, I recommend you check out Scrooged or The Muppets Christmas Carol – two of the best tellings of this story out there (I think the casting of Fauzzy Bear as Fezziwinkle makes the Jim Hensen version even better than the original Dickens).

In case we don’t meet again before the holiday, I’d like to wish all my reader a wonderful Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanza/Festivus/Pagan Winter Festival/Non-Denominational Winter Holiday.  Whatever floats your boat!  Enjoy this time, find a book to dig into, and be good to one another!