Half of a good book

The Eyre Affair
Jasper Fforde
2002

Jasper Fforde has a knack for making the absurd believable. Things unfold at a brisk -- but unrushed -- pace. And then it seems like he got tired of it and just decided to wrap it up as quickly as possible.

Thursday Next is a literary detective, and The Eyre Affair is part detective story, part science fiction, part fun with books. She ends up inside the narrative of Jane Eyre. This is billed as the plot, but this happens in only the last 100 pages or so, and the rest is a lot of build up to that.

Once Thursday is inside Jane Eyre, the book really starts to unravel. Thursday has lines like, "I wondered if Landen had ever loved me as much as Rochester loved Jane."

Sigh.

Back in the real world, Thursday meets up with her Landen (after an overused plot point that would be giving too much away to elaborate on, but it's cliche).

Then everything gets resolved in 18 pages. I feel kind of cheap, really.