Friday, March 23, 2007
The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book
I just finished The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book, the first two books in the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde. They are fun little books, full of wit and literary humor. They are great books to read quickly, just for plot - and fit well with my preferred escapist reading of detective fiction. I did find that a little goes a long way and that small doses are best.
The Thursday Next series is an odd mix of science fiction, literature meta-jokes, and detective novels, with a definite British flavor. I am reminded of Douglas Adams and Red Dwarf (but thankfully not Sherlock Holmes – I often feel like Conan Doyle is talking down to his readers…but that’s another review). I kept feeling that if I were British, I would probably find them laugh-out-loud funny (do the Brits laugh out loud? Or is it frowned upon?) but since I’m American, I just find them smile-to-myself humorous.
I’ll admit that by the time I was done with Lost in a Good Book, I was ready to put the series down for a while. Instead of buying the rest of the books, I’ll reserve them at the library and read them as they come available. What made them less compelling as they went on? I think perhaps they are a little too clever after a while. By the time I got through the first half of the second book, I ws thinking, “Oh, speaking to characters by ‘footnoterphone?’ Hunhh!" Instead of entertainingly clever, it seemed a little roll-my-eyes-clever.
I think the major problem for me is that I’m not wholly captivated by the prevailing premise of the series: that the worlds and characters inside of books are very real. It worked ok for me in the first book, because the primary, human-centered plot was also fascinating. And it WAS entertaining to see how Thursday could talk to Rochester or other characters in the book she was in when they were temporarily dropped from the immediate narrative. They had to be ready to be on character when called for, but were given free rein outside of the text as written. Yet Fforde seems to go deeper and deeper into this science fiction world he’s created, grinning from ear to ear about the cleverness of it all, oh golly - the cleverness of it all!
I think perhaps it comes down to how compelling one finds the world the writer has created. I find the world of Harry Potter incredibly compelling. I find the world of Thursday Next a little less so. Perhaps they are just a little too “meta” for me. Surprisingly, I found the other non-literary elements of Thursday's world more compelling (like the time- and mind-bending of the ChronoGuard).
I’m sure I also miss many of the references (I really DO need to read Great Expectations one of these days.), but that didn’t affect the reading the way I thought it might. I was able to get the gist of the situation, even when I didn’t get the joke of the specifics. (If I had read Kafka, the middle half of the book would probably been much funnier, but I got the basic idea).
So, if you want a literary-minded and clever escapist good read, pick one up. But just one.
Who am I?
Comments
hi leah hows it going? it was great saying hi on sunday say hi to the boys ans David bye
Posted by: kerra | April 15, 2007 06:31 PM