The Eyre AffairJasper Fford
Penguin
374 pgs.
The heroine's name is Thursday Next. Greatest Name Ever and reason I wanted to read this. Plus, the author has two effs in his last name. Yeah, that's how I roll.
Turns out Thursday works as a Literary Detective in SpecOps. She's an SO-27, the higher the number the lower the status, or a LiteraTec. They investigate when books change, when manuscripts are stolen, who wrote Shakespeare's plays, when people tried to sell fake versions of classics, etc. Sounds awesome right? Well, two other members of Thursday's family are SpecOps too but different levels. The coolest being her uncle Mycroft (don't you love these names!) who has created a Prose Portal, into which he sends his wife only to find out she's being hit on by Wordsworth. This Prose Portal is stolen by a big bad company, Goliath, run by a guy named Jack Schitt. No, I am not making this up. There is also a dangerous criminal named Hades who has a brother named Styx. So.Much.Fun.
There is an actual story that involves Hades and Jane Eyre and Rochester and kidnapping and killing and 8 people named Felix too. Fforde includes passages from Jane Eyre and his version ends differently than ours. I really liked this one. If you get it, make sure you get one with big print though! I had a slow time reading it because the print was sooo small, I almost needed a magnifying glass. Maybe if I had one, I would have been able to meet some famous characters! I'm off to find the sequel to this one!
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I read this book years ago and thought it was just about the most funky book I've ever read. I think about it fairy often. I should read more by this author.
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