Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair, the first in a series, takes place in a madcap, slightly incoherent alternate universe where the Crimean War never ended, time travel is possible (and, like all good things, bureaucratized), and--most importantly--books are the most important things in the world. In fact, books are so important that at one point Thursday Next, the impeccably upright and very likeable protagonist, can utter the following sentence without causing any stir: "The murders are tragic, obviously, but Jane Eyre is the thing here."

Thursday Next (great name!) is a literary detective. Her job is to track down literary crimes: books are so valuable in her world that master criminals make away with them rather than with jewels and other less important objects. It seems that an original Martin Chuzzlewit has been stolen. But in tracking it down, she runs across the ultimate villain, Acheron Hades, who seems to have superpowers that enable him to bend reality. And it turns out that Hades has a devious plan: he will enter into the plot of Jane Eyre and destroy the story.

It's hard to categorize The Eyre Affair. The truth is that it's probably science fiction--after all, it has time travel, cloned dodos, even vampires. But it is really not concerned with these little innovations, which it treats as nothing more than side jokes for the most part. (Though the dodos are very cute.) Instead, it's more of a detective novel. Or a romance novel. Or, perhaps, just a really long, vastly entertaining running joke.

One thing about which there is no doubt is that The Eyre Affair is a novel for book lovers. Fforde is clearly and unabashedly a book nerd. And the world he describes is a world where book nerds reign supreme. Indeed, even snot-nosed kids argue about literary figures, and the raging question of the day is the identity of Shakespeare.

But Fforde's fictional universe is just the start of his inventiveness. He throws a dozen ideas at the reader at once, most of them mere throwaways. Some of them (ok, many of them) are just stupid--the Retinal Screen-Saver is a real groaner, and there's really no reason to say that the Finis Hotel is "the last word in comfort and style" (except that, looking at it again, that is kind of funny). Others are sheer genius--the chapter where Thursday goes to help out "Spike" Stoker, who hunts vampires, is both creepy and funny. Somewhere in between these extremes is Fforde's decision to name another villain Jack Schitt--a name that will not be preserved in the inevitable movie. My point is merely that, although not all of Fforde's ideas work, there are just so many of them that you feel like you're in a whirlwind of invention throughout the entire story.

Although Fforde has clearly lavished a great deal of attention on his universe, he is vastly unconcerned with such other formalities as plotting, continuity, or realism. The plot is ludicrous and overblown; many of the characters are mere caricatures (for God's sake, the villain is called Acheron Hades), though they somehow still come across as warm and likeable or cold and despicable, as the situation warrants; and the conclusion is, in all honesty, a little bit swift for all of the buildup. But somehow none of these things matter. Fforde is having so much fun--and making us have so much fun--that all of these flaws seem too nitpicky to even notice.

The one major flaw of The Eyre Affair is that at times Fforde seems to lose control over his ideas, and the novel starts meandering. There are also a few jarring lapses into POVs besides Thursday's that could be (and, in later novels, are) handled more smoothly. And, for all that the world is fun and random, sometimes it's just too random: it doesn't feel like a world you could live in because, frankly, it could not logically exist under some of Fforde's less coherent descriptions.

But I chalk up these flaws to first-novel syndrome. (And, as it turns out, Fforde's second novel about Thursday Next is simply magnificent.) The Eyre Affair is hugely fun to read, and I highly recommend it.

Copyright © 2004 Steven Wu