Jasper Fforde

[Dragonlily]

Does anybody here read Jasper Fforde? I just discovered he is on tour for his new book, and will be here July 26. I've had his THE EYRE AFFAIR for quite a while without reading it -- bought it for the irresistible premise. Now I'm going to read it, and rush through his other four before his appearance if I like it.

Jasper Fforde
Tuesday the 26th, 7:30PM Powell's City of Books on Burnside

The author of the acclaimed Thursday Next novels returns with a new series! When Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty III is found shattered to death beneath a wall in a shabby area of town, all the evidence points to his ex-wife. But Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his assistant Mary Mary remain unconvinced — and before long they find themselves grappling with a sinister plot involving cross-border money laundering, bullion smuggling, problems with beanstalks, titans seeking asylum, and the cut and thrust world of international chiropody. The Big Over Easy is the first in Jasper Fforde's new Nursery Crime series.

[Dragonlily]

Picked out of powells.com

Publisher Comments:
Great Britain circa 1985: time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. Baconians are trying to convince the world that Francis Bacon really wrote Shakespeare, there are riots between the Surrealists and Impressionists, and thousands of men are named John Milton, an homage to the real Milton and a very confusing situation for the police. Amidst all this, Acheron Hades, Third Most Wanted Man In the World, steals the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and kills a minor character, who then disappears from every volume of the novel ever printed! But that's just a prelude . . .

Hades' real target is the beloved Jane Eyre, and it's not long before he plucks her from the pages of Bronte's novel. Enter Thursday Next. She's the Special Operative's renowned literary detective, and she drives a Porsche. With the help of her uncle Mycroft's Prose Portal, Thursday enters the novel to rescue Jane Eyre from this heinous act of literary homicide. It's tricky business, all these interlopers running about Thornfield, and deceptions run rampant as their paths cross with Jane, Rochester, and Miss Fairfax. Can Thursday save Jane Eyre and Bronte's masterpiece? And what of the Crimean War? Will it ever end? And what about those annoying black holes that pop up now and again, sucking things into time-space voids . . .

Suspenseful and outlandish, absorbing and fun, The Eyre Affair is a caper unlike any other and an introduction to the imagination of a most distinctive writer and his singular fictional universe. Next up in the Thursday Next series: Lost in a Good Book. Read more about it at thursdaynext.com.

Review:
"For five years, I dragged freshman boys kicking and screaming through Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. It was torture — part of the academy's "Nip a Love of Literature in the Bud" program. But finally, those plaintive cries have been answered: Through the miracle of literary-genetic engineering, Jasper Fforde has crossbred Jane Eyre with James Bond and Harry Potter....This is about as much fun as you can have in the classics section without being thrown out of the library. To those students who swore they wouldn't reread Jane Eyre 'til Hades freezes over, I have good news: He's out cold. Start reading." Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor (read the entire Christian Science Monitor review)

Review:
"The Eyre Affair is mostly a collection of jokes, conceits, and puzzles. It's smart, frisky, and sheer catnip for former English majors, a cross between Douglas Adams's A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Jonathan Lethem's Gun, With Occasional Music, with a big chunk of The Norton Anthology of English Literature tossed in." Laura Miller, Salon.com

Review:
"[A] spirited send-up of genre fiction — it's part hard-boiled mystery, part time-machine caper — that features [a heroine] who will put you more in mind of Bridget Jones than Miss Marple. This may sound like Douglas Adams territory, and indeed it is; Fforde has written a pop science fiction novel with brains and sass." Kera Bolonik, The New York Times Book Review

Review:
"An unusually sure-footed first novel, this literary folly serves up a generally unique stew of fantasy, science fiction, procedural, and cozy literary mystery — but in the end is more dancing bear than ballet." Kirkus Reviews

Review:
"If you have read any of the classics of English Literature, you will feel strangely at home in the action-packed alternative universe of Thursday Next....Hectic, humorous...and most satisfying." London Times

Review:
"So unusual you've got to read it to believe it; and please do." The Bookseller (London)

Review:
"[Thursday Next is] part Bridget Jones, part Nancy Drew, and part Dirty Harry." (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)

Synopsis:
The "New York Times" bestseller is the first in a series of outlandishly clever adventures featuring the resourceful, fearless literary detective Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative.

Synopsis:
In Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Brontë's novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career. Fforde's ingenious fantasy-enhanced by a Web site that re-creates the world of the novel--unites intrigue with English literature in a delightfully witty mix.

Jasper Fforde recently traded a varied career in the film industry for staring vacantly out of the window and arranging words on a page.

[Ainulindale]

I'm just about to start reading his work, apparently he has had a rather big following. It's a good time to start now as his next book, although occuring in the same settign doesn't feature the same main character.

I jsut interviewd Mr. Fforde last week; seems like an interesting chap - and I'm looking forward to reading hsi nvoels but I get a sesne it will be a boom or bust.

At any rate I'll revisit this thread afte I get some of is books behind me

[Dragonlily]

Are you going to write up your interview?

[Ainulindale]

Are you going to write up your interview?

Probably not till next month, today I putting up one of Charles Stross, and I think another admin has one today too. Fforde is probably mid-july. I want to get the book behind me, in case I have more questions.

[Dragonlily]

I finished THE EYRE AFFAIR. I must still be infected with the Bestseller mystique: I expected more. Yes, it's clever and funny. No, it doesn't have the substance it could have. The tone reminds me more of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum than anything else.

So the field is still wide open to some author who can put this great concept to better use.

IMO.

But if you're in the mood for fluff, and you know some of the classics, I highly recommend it.

[Ainulindale]

I just put up my interview with Mr. Fforde today. If any are interested, it's here.


I read Big Over Easy, it was okay, but not something that commited me to have to clai mto be a huge fan.

I an see why he has a bit of a cult following (younger folks), but it's not monumental.

[Dragonlily]

Thank you, Jay. My reaction was pretty much the same of yours. I never did go on and buy the books after EYRE AFFAIR, though the notion of Rochester resignedly marking time until it was time to go through his story with Jane again, tickled me.

[Reisheiruhime]

I like Fforde. Spike Stoker is my favorite character, though. You gotta love that guy. *quiet, maniacal chuckle* Oh, and Emperor Zhark. Wish I knew his history.

But yeah, Fforde is good fluff.