I missed last month’s book club meeting because i was sick. At the meeting, it was decided that the next book would be The Eyre Affair. Makes sense; we just finished Jane Eyre. However, I wish the circumstances were reversed. I would have loved to discuss Jane, but i didn’t really care for this book too much.
Warning to any book clubbers who haven’t finished: spoilers below.
First, the good. The world is rather interesting. It’s a parallel universe to our own, except the main form of entertainment is literature, which everyone takes quite seriously. Cloning is normal (the dodo is the trendy pet to own). Time-travel happens isn’t unheard of. And a machine has been built that will allow you to enter into a book and interact with the characters. It’s all quite fascinating, really. And the character names were quite humorous. Our main character is a woman named Thursday Next (i kept trying to call her Next Thursday). The annoying-but-not-very-effective boss of our hero is Braxton Hicks. Acheron Hades is, of course, the really bad guy. The pretty bad guy is named Jack Schitt.
The bad. I was bored for the first two-thirds of the book, until we finally got around to Jane Eyre. For a book named The Eyre Affair, frankly there wasn’t enough of Jane. I was also bored with the whole war in Crimea. I think the author wanted the reader to take it seriously and realize it was a defining part of Thursday. However, it didn’t feel real to me. Another thing – there was no chemistry between Thursday and Landon. I was actually hoping she would end up with Bowden, and there’s something wrong with the story when i’m rooting for the wrong guy. But the biggest issue for me was the lack of character depth. We go a little bit into Thursday’s character, but not deep enough. I prefer my characters to be complex. I prefer my villains to have shades of grey. Acheron Hades was totally unbelievable and uninteresting in his desire to be evil for evil’s sake.
I did really get into it when Jane Eyre showed up. So the last third of the book was pretty enjoyable. However, i probably won’t continue following Thursday on her future adventures.