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I picked up this book soon after it came out and
could not get past page 60 or so. I think it had to do with my
expectations when I heard what this book was about: I was expecting
the novel to deal with characters interfering with plots of
classical novels (which it does), but what I hadn't expected was
such a wacky story. Not only does this book deal with characters
from the "real" world interfering with works of fiction, but their
world is not our world but an alternate world. In short, I hadn't
recognized the book for what it is: chiefly a science-fiction novel.
Having picked up this book for the second time, I
was better prepared for it, and this time I managed to finish it. To
a certain degree, I can even say that I enjoyed it. The story is the
following:
In an England at war with the Russian Empire
over Crimea, Thursday Next, the main female protagonist, war veteran, is a
SpecOps in literary detection. She deals with problems concerning
authenticity, robberies of first editions and such. In Thursday's
world, literature is more valued than in our world: automatons recite
Shakespeare's plays in train stations and people regularly go to see
Richard III, in which they are in turn actors and public, a public
participating like in a showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
One day, when the original manuscript from Dickens's Martin
Chuzzlewit disappears, everything is about to change. Acheron
Hades, a villain in the vein of Rowling's Voldemort, has a devilish
plan involving drastic changes in the narrative of literary
masterpieces. His plan involves Mycroft Next, Thursday's uncle, and
his revolutionary inventions. It
will be further complicated by the hidden agenda of a large
corporation named Goliath. For Thursday, this will be the biggest
investigation of her life, not only because she will find herself in
dangerous situations, some involving time travel, an activity
usually allowed only to ChronoGuards (SpecOps-12), but also
because the story line of her favorite novel, Jane Eyre (a
Jane Eyre with a different ending than the one we know), will
be threatened...
As I said, if you read this book, don't expect
any logic, you have to go along with the story, this is the only
way you will appreciate it. Even if I expected more about Jane
Eyre (which I eventually got), and less about time travel (which
I am usually extremely fond of, as well as alternate universes), crazy inventions or wacky characters, I ended up liking the story. I
thought it could easily have done without the vampires and werewolves for
instance, but I found some details like the presence of the Japanese tourist in Thornfield Hall delightful. Some of the humor and satire was fun,
the rest just average...
I also liked how Fforde, who obviously knows
Jane Eyre pretty well (although at one point Thursday explains that Rochester realizes he is in love with Jane only when
she leaves Thornfield to attend Mrs. Reed: is it some alternate
version of the story again or Fforde's mistake?) explained the
elements that must have puzzled many Bronte's critics, the ones that
have a supernatural tone in the novel as we know it. I think he
even should have gone further down this path. What I have to reproach
this novel aside from going in too many directions is the lack of
depth of the two-dimensional characters and the fact that Fforde has
no idea what it is to write as a first-person female narrator: never
have I seen so masculine a woman as Thursday Next! (I understand
that Thursday is no Jane Eyre or Elizabeth Bennet but still...)
I don't know if I
will be tempted to read the sequels (Lost in a Good Book and
The Well of Lost Plots) or
not...
Rating: 
© Discussing Books, 02/15/2004
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