The planet is Earth, but an Earth that is different to our own in some odd respects. The present day is 1985, the Crimean War is still being waged, Wales is a communist republic and jet engines have yet to be invented.
There are vampires and werewolves, and some humans possess extraordinary powers, such as the ability to move through time, or through walls, or from this world into those contained in works of literature.
When a criminal mastermind decides to hold the literary world to ransom by kidnapping and killing beloved fictional figures, thereby forever altering the treasured texts of popular novels, literary detective Thursday Next finds herself enmeshed in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse that threatens her friends, her family and her country. Can she bring the perp to justice and rescue literary reality?
Jasper Fforde has taken the genre of urban fantasy and given it a comedic twist, and he has done it with a lot of charm and intelligence. The text reads like that of a thriller, but the content is funny, gripping and erudite. This guy knows his literature, and he weaves it effortlessly into his narrative. Shakespeare's plays figure heavily, but central place is given to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, hence the title of the book. Fforde's wordplay sparkles throughout the text, and the action rarely flags.
I will happily compare this book to Terry Pratchett's Sam Vimes novels in the Discworld series. Of course they are different, but they operate in the same satirical landscape.
I eagerly look forward to reading another Fforde novel some time soon.
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