Quite simply, the Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde is the silliest novel I’ve read for a long time. The plot is strange, the characters are unbelievable and the whole thing is absolutely wonderful. If you are happy to suspend disbelief for a few hours and imerse yourself in a cracking thriller with some of the funniest lines that you will ever come across, then this book is really a must. It’s not unlike a Terry Pratchett novel, though it is set in Swindon, a far stranger place than Discworld.
Anyway, if you would like to find out how Jane Eyre got its ending, why the banana is so called, why Nelson was shot at the start of Traflagar, who wrote Shakespeare’s plays and why a motorway service station has the strange name of Leigh Delamere, this book is for you.
One reply on “The Eyre Affair”
I read “Something Rotten” which is part of the same series, and at first I was almost tempted to give it up because it was so silly. However I began to get into the plot and it carried me along to the end. A great read.