The Thursday Next Series, by Jasper Fforde

When I find a book that I love, and it’s part of a series, you can bet big money that I’ll be rushing out to the local Chapters to pick up all the other books.  Finding a good series, one that I can sink my teeth into and really enjoy, is a treat, and something that doesn’t happen all that often.  So, after reading (and loving) The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde, I immediately rushed out and picked up the rest of the books in the Thursday Next Series: Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, First Among Sequels, One of Our Thursdays is Missing, and The Woman Who Died a Lot.  (And I see there’s to be an eighth book – Dark Reading Matter, expected in 2015.)

Fforde’s Thursday Next universe is one that is remarkable similar to our own.  Thursday lives and works in Swindon, and the day-to-day niceties are all the same.  But Thursday’s world is one of time-travel, genetic splicing, and werewolves.  Thursday works for a branch of the British government that deals with literary crimes, has a pet dodo named Pickwick, and has a time-travelling father who has gone rogue and so was never technically born.

But, this is only Thursday’s life in our world.  What makes Thursday’s adventures so interesting and exciting is that she is able to jump into BookWorld; the world in which all books of fiction exist.  In BookWorld, the characters are living, breathing people, independent of their plot lines; settings are only in use when a book is being read; and all sorts of shenanigans and hijinks occur for which Thursday and the other agents of Jurisfiction are required to step in and police the goings on of the citizens of BookWorld.  It all sounds highly unbelievable, but when Fforde sets BookWorld in the terms of modern bureaucracy, it all becomes very relatable and understandable; somehow, he was able to create a fictional world that lives right under the readers’ noses.  And the meta-jokes.  So many meta-jokes.

Stepping into the Thursday Next universe takes two things: 1- suspension of disbelief, and 2- a sense of humour.  If you can bring both of these things to a reading of these books, you’re guaranteed to love them.  Thursday’s adventures, and the people that populate them, are all highly unbelievable and at first I wasn’t sure if I could fully buy into them.  But by the end of book two, they become de rigueur; at some point, it becomes completely understandable and acceptable that croquet is the world’s favorite sport, that minotaurs dress in trench-coats and drop pianos on people, and that dodos just can’t be taught to stand on one leg, no matter how many marshmallows you offer them.

So, final verdict?  I loved these books, and so I would highly recommend them.  Fforde’s writing style is highly accessible, his characters are incredibly engaging, and his plots are unique, innovative and enjoyable.  If you’re the type of person that enjoys a quirky read, then these books are for you.  Fforde’s got several other books out (and a couple from a new series), and I’ll definitely be picking them up in the near future.

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!