Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë, 1847) / The Eyre Affair (Jasper Fforde, 2001)

I'm not sure what drove me to pluck Jane Eyre from the shelf, possibly I'd not read anything so worthy and literary in a while. I'm glad I did though as I found it a really easy, pleasurable read. Jane narrates her life from time spent as a child at a boarding school, then jumps on to her early adulthood as a governess at Thornfield Hall, and on to time spent with her new-found relations, the Rivers family. Along the way Jane falls in love with Mr Rochester, and he with her, and after a diversion when Jane leaves Thornfield, everything ties up sort-of-happily by the end. 

After reading Brontë's original, I decided to revisit Jasper Fforde's humorous detective novel that uses the book in an intriguing way. I've read The Eyre Affair before, not knowing the story of Jane Eyre, and as a result I didn't feel that I got as much from the first read through as I might have. Upon rereading The Eyre Affair I could appreciate the sections based on Brontë's book more, although I have to say, I still didn't find it as great as all of the cover-quotes would have me believe. 

The Eyre Affair sees LiteraTec Thursday Next (there are lots of daft names in the book, including Paige Turner and Jack Schitt, which are amusing to begin with) out to stop Acheron Hades from first destroying the narrative of Charles Dicken's Martin Chuzzlewit, and then Jane Eyre. In a curious mix of literary parody, alternative history (where the world is book-mad and nearly all past time are informed by literature, including coin-operated Shakespeare quoting booths, this is also a world where airships are still used for transport), time-travel, the supernatural, and standard detective tropes, there is almost too much going on, and Fforde is so intent on wringing as many clever puns and literary allusions out of each sentence, occasionally I found the book a bit wearying. 

Where The Eyre Affair picks up is when it brings Jane Eyre into the mix, through a strange Prose Portal device that allows the user to 'enter' a novel and interact with the characters - Hades intends to hold the world to ransom by entering the original manuscript of Jane Eyre and kidnapping its protagonist, thus rending the first-person narrative dead. Somehow doing this affects all previous editions of the book, effectively wiping Jane Eyre from the literary firmament. I found it a strange concept to get my head around, and there are big gaps in how this is supposed to work, but disbelief is set to permanent suspension throughout the novel. 

In this alternate history, Jane Eyre ends with our hero going to India with St John Rivers, whereas the 'real' book ends with her return to Mr Rochester, who has been blinded and disabled when Thornfield Hall burns down, and the two marry. Fforde suggests that Thursday Next's interactions with Eyre and Mr Rochester leads to the 'real ending', with Thursday being in the original manuscript when Thornfield burns to the ground, as a result of Hades' actions. It's a fun romp, and a well-executed idea, but I have to say that I enjoyed Jane Eyre much more than I did The Eyre Affair.

Brontë writes with humour and warmth, and I really enjoyed Jane Eyre as a character, she's an interesting heroine. Although my interest waned a little towards the end when Jane left Thornfield Hall and took up with the Rivers' (and I found it just too coincidental that the people who took her in turned out to be her cousins, but hey, that's nothing compared to the coincidences I swallowed during The Eyre Affair!), I could easily tell why this book became a classic. On the strength of The Eyre Affair, I probably won't pick up any of Thursday Next's further adventures, because although I enjoyed it to an extent, I get the feeling I would enjoy it more if I was a snooty book critic or professor of English Literature. I'd happily pick up more by Brontë, and would branch out to her sisters too.