I enjoyed The Eyre Affair. It centers on Thursday Next, a war veteran and police officer who investigates the loss of a time/fiction travel machine, the "prose portal," and the kidnapping of Jane Eyre from the novel of the same name.
This is fantasy, obviously, and alternative history - here, the authorship of Shakespeare's plays is hotly debated, Richard III is an interactive event like singing along to the Sound of Music, the Crimean War has been dragging on for 131 years, Winston Churchill never survived to adulthood, and literature is so popular its popularity would rival a combination of reality TV, NASCAR, and pop music - if that were possible. Jane Eyre ends with Jane resignedly marrying St. John Rivers and taking off to Africa. The novel's passionate admirers admit, when forced to do so, that the ending is unsatisfying.
Did I mention that there are vampires in this world? And, almost everyone has an interesting name.
Thursday is another in a long line of detectives with personal problems. Her character's assertion, bravado, and independence reminded me a little of Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski. Unlike many detectives, while she is lonely, and lovelorn, really, she's far from alone: she has her pet dodo, her ex-fiancee, both parents, an aunt and uncle, and even a brother.
Thursday is a veteran of the Crimean War and of a pivotal battle in which her brother was killed. She's been traumatized by the war, and her life has been on hold since she broke up with her fiancee, also a veteran of her unit in the Crimea.
Her uncle Mycroft is an eccentric, a brilliant inventor who has devised a machine called the "Prose Portal." To test the machine, he sends his wife, Polly, to the poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," but has trouble bringing her back.
Her father is a fugitive ChronoGuard operative who is looking into the death of Nelson; he fears history has been rewritten by the French revisionists. Meanwhile, Thursday's mother is convinced that her father is having an affair with Emma Hamilton.
There is a lot of exposition in this novel: we also get to meet Joffy, Thursday's brother and another improbably named relation. I found myself feeling that the plot didn't really get rolling until around page 250 and still didn't display any sense of urgency.
In Thursday's work she encounters many frustrating bureaucratic problems, but the worst is Jack Schitt of the Goliath Corporation. The Goliath Corporation has its fingers in many pies; one of them is a 24-hour news network.
The ending was very satisfying, however, so I'd say it was worth the wait. This is yet another book for lovers of literature; the novel Jane Eyre doesn't appear much until the last quarter of the book. But those readers who love the romance of Rochester and Jane will enjoy the ending hugely.
This is fantasy, obviously, and alternative history - here, the authorship of Shakespeare's plays is hotly debated, Richard III is an interactive event like singing along to the Sound of Music, the Crimean War has been dragging on for 131 years, Winston Churchill never survived to adulthood, and literature is so popular its popularity would rival a combination of reality TV, NASCAR, and pop music - if that were possible. Jane Eyre ends with Jane resignedly marrying St. John Rivers and taking off to Africa. The novel's passionate admirers admit, when forced to do so, that the ending is unsatisfying.
Did I mention that there are vampires in this world? And, almost everyone has an interesting name.
Thursday is another in a long line of detectives with personal problems. Her character's assertion, bravado, and independence reminded me a little of Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski. Unlike many detectives, while she is lonely, and lovelorn, really, she's far from alone: she has her pet dodo, her ex-fiancee, both parents, an aunt and uncle, and even a brother.
Thursday is a veteran of the Crimean War and of a pivotal battle in which her brother was killed. She's been traumatized by the war, and her life has been on hold since she broke up with her fiancee, also a veteran of her unit in the Crimea.
Her uncle Mycroft is an eccentric, a brilliant inventor who has devised a machine called the "Prose Portal." To test the machine, he sends his wife, Polly, to the poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," but has trouble bringing her back.
Her father is a fugitive ChronoGuard operative who is looking into the death of Nelson; he fears history has been rewritten by the French revisionists. Meanwhile, Thursday's mother is convinced that her father is having an affair with Emma Hamilton.
There is a lot of exposition in this novel: we also get to meet Joffy, Thursday's brother and another improbably named relation. I found myself feeling that the plot didn't really get rolling until around page 250 and still didn't display any sense of urgency.
In Thursday's work she encounters many frustrating bureaucratic problems, but the worst is Jack Schitt of the Goliath Corporation. The Goliath Corporation has its fingers in many pies; one of them is a 24-hour news network.
The ending was very satisfying, however, so I'd say it was worth the wait. This is yet another book for lovers of literature; the novel Jane Eyre doesn't appear much until the last quarter of the book. But those readers who love the romance of Rochester and Jane will enjoy the ending hugely.
I don't know, but a name like Jack Schitt--who works for the Goliath Corp--is really quite hilarious. :)
ReplyDeleteYes - and he appears in other novels, doesn't he? Or is just that Goliath Corp endures.
ReplyDelete