The Eyre Affair

Title: The Eyre Affair
Author: Jasper Fforde 
Rating: 2
Genre: Science Fiction
Length: 374 pgs. 

Synopsis: It's 1985 in an alternate reality version of England and Thursday Next is a LiteraTec, a detective who investigates literary mysteries. In this world, literature is a *big* deal. There's also time travel and vampire sand seemingly invincible villains. Thursday's uncle has managed to create a machine that uses bookworms (actual worms. who eat books) to transport people into works of literature. For example, right now his wife is lost in a Wordsworth poem. Enter Acheron Hades, whose villainy knows no bounds. He's learned that if you enter the manuscript of a book and make changes, those changes go out to every copy of the book ever created. Hades kidnaps Thursday's uncle and uses his machine to hold Dicken's Martin Chuzzlewit hostage. After that plot fails, he decides to go after one of the most beloved books in all of literature, Jane Eyre.

Review: It had so much promise! Who wouldn't want to read a book with literary detectives, time travel, and the ability to travel into books?! But oh my god, it was bad. Let's start with the setting: Thursday Next's world is weird and not in a god way. It's England, but alternate history, but set in the modern day, but not really, with vampires and genetic splicing, but everything else is normal, but the Crimean war has been going on for 100 years...you get where I'm going with this, it's just too much. It reminded me of Terry Pratchett, but on a really off day.

The characters left much to be desired as well. Thursday was one of the few fully fleshed out characters, yet her whole focus was on things that happened 10 years ago. Get over it, girl. She has the potential of being a really strong female character, but she ends up being just a stereotype. The other characters were just as bad. Acheron Hades (because of course you'd name your villain after 2 gods of hell) doesn't have any motivation other than being a pain in the side of the police. He doesn't seem evil, just bored. Everyone else, including the man Thursday left behind and yet can't stop think about, were instantly forgettable.

I was all for giving this book 1.5 stars until the point that Thursday went into Jane Eyre. Then the book really picked up and the plot got interesting, it's just a shame that it waited until the last 50 pages to do so. This book was a waste of my time. Skip it.

Lesser Expectations

When Dicken’s wrote Great Expectations, he created one of the most intriguing literary characters I’ve ever come across. The ghastly specter that was Miss Havisham is the most visual memorable character, although she’s not the lead in the story. Ronald Frame has taken her intrigue and attempts to tell the story of what came before. What happened in this woman’s past to make her so….let’s go with crazy.

When I saw that Gillian Anderson and Helena Bonham Carter had been cast to play Miss Havisham in BBC and film versions respectively, I was appalled. Miss Havisham had to be old! But if you look at the dates, it runs true that should would be in her late 30s at the start of the novel – when Estella and Pip are young. For a woman in her 30s to be so ravaged by the past, it must have been quite a story, so I can see why Frame chose her to base his story around. Unfortunately, that’s about where Havisham stops being interesting.

 

Rather than being a story about a woman’s decent into madness, it was a tale of a rich middle-class teenage girl who went to parties. It didn’t tie into the story of Great Expectations until maybe the last third of the book and even then, the connections were flimsy at best. This could have been the story of any random woman, not Miss Havisham. But at the same time, I don’t think that would have been enough to save it. The only character that was well fleshed out was that of Catherine Havisham. None of her relationships were explored in any real depth and when her best friend moves away, it was a mystery why they were friends at all, other than Frame calling them best friends. I think maybe he just doesn’t how women work: their friendships, their relationships, their teenage years as a whole. Some male authors can write women well, but less than 30 pages into this book I knew without looking at the back cover that it was definitely written by a man. 

What could have been a great, in-depth character study turned out to be poorly painted façade. What a letdown.

How I wish for '50s glam...

The best way to describe this book is: The Bell Jar, but non-fiction. Pain, Parties, Work tells the story of Sylvia Plath during the month of June, 1953 and her internship at Mademoiselle magazine in New York City. That month in NYC was exciting, but with a manic foreboding.

This book bugged me, its set-up was extremely tangential. We’d randomly be talking about someone Plath dated once or twice, then jump backward to her feelings about her mother, then forward again to someone vaguely famous that walked by Plath and the other girls once on the street. It didn’t make any sense. Winder also couldn’t seem to decide what format to go with. For example, there was a “Dictionary of Adolescence” chapter that just listed everyday things and throughout the book, there were boxes of asides relating to crew cuts, or oysters, or the fact that Sylvia got nylons for Christmas one time. Why do we care?! Winder didn’t seem to actually know much about Plath, but was trying to piece together a book that would sell. Chapters were full of information about things that Plath loved, but without any credibility. In the afterward, she did include the names of people she had interviewed, but didn’t cite anything within the text of the book. I would have liked some footnotes.

The one thing that I truly did love about this book was that it gave personal insights into Plath’s life. In most ways, she was just a regular girl and in a way I think that adds something to her. She could be anyone, which is why The Bell Jar resonates with so many young girls: they can identify with Esther and thus Plath herself. All in all, this book was a let-down; don’t waste your time – just go read The Bell Jar again.

P.S. Why that cover image? It’s lovely, I’ll admit, but a biography (especially a biography of someone who loved being photographed) should have an image of the subject on the cover, not some random woman.

Newbery Award Winners--the 1920s

Over a year ago, Colby Sharp and Mr. Schu started the Newbery Medal Reading Challenge, encouraging people to read all of the books that have won the Newbery Medal (awarded every year since 1922  "to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.") I love many of the Newbery winners, so I decided to accept the challenge.

Here are some of my favorite Newbery winners, as an example:

    

When I started, I was four or five books behind. I just checked. Colby Sharp and Mr. Schu recently reviewed Kira-Kira, the 2005 winner. What about me? Oh, well, I'm happy to announce I've finished all of the winners from the 1920s!

Which isn't even a full decade of winners.

Why has it taken me so long to read eight children's books? Because, honestly, the early winners just aren't very good. I'm not an expert on children's literature, but a lot has changed in attitudes and the style of writing for children since the Newbery Medal was first awarded.

So, in order to spare you all from early Newbery-induced boredom, here is a brief summary of what you're missing (or not).

The Story of Mankind
by Hendrik Willem van Loon
Winner of the 1922 Newbery Medal
0 Stars

The Newbery Medal gets an inauspicious beginning with a non-fiction book: The Story of Mankind. The version I read was 704 pages. Now, I usually like history. But reading this was like having a very intelligent but condescending grandfather sit you down on a rainy day and give you a seven-hour speech on history, at time giving little asides on how now we should understand how important history is and why would we ever want to read a novel (gasp) when history is so interesting.

The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle
by Hugh Lofting
Winner of the 1923 Newbery Medal
2.5 Stars

Do you remember the Doctor Dolittle movie with Eddie Murphy? Yes, I try to forget about it too. The book has very little in common with the movie. A very well-behaved boy goes on a journey with Doctor Dolittle, who has learned to talk to animals, and various animal friends to save Doctor Dolittle's friend/colleague Long Arrow. Some kids might actually enjoy this one.

The Dark Frigate
by Charles Hawes
Winner of the 1924 Newbery Medal
1 Star

"Yay! Pirates!" was my initial reaction when I read the description of The Dark Frigate. That was probably the most exciting part of the whole reading experience. Seriously. I fell asleep a lot while reading this book. In fact, I can't really tell you what happened in this book.

Tales From Silver Lands
by Charles J. Finger
Winner of the 1925 Newbery Medal
2 Stars

The curse of the condescending, grandfatherly narrator continues. In this book, we have a bunch of folktales collected from Central America and South America. The stories were interesting, but not written to be engaging at all.

Shen of the Sea
by Arthur Bowie Chrisman
Winner of the 1926 Newbery Medal
1.5 Stars

We move from a collection of real South American folktales to a collection of made-up Chinese folktales written by an American. There might have been a bit more variety in the stories compared to Tales From Silver Lands, but they come off stereotypical and seem written to teach a lesson instead of tell a story.

Smoky the Cowhorse
by Will James
Winner of the 1927 Newbery Medal
1 Star

I don't really like Westerns. I never went through a horse-loving phrase as a kid. In fact, I avoid inspirational horse movies, which seemed like its own genre for awhile. So, a life story of a cowhorse narrated by the horse himself in a strange dialect never had a strong chance of impressing me. The story ranges from Smoky's idyllic childhood, time under a loving owner, through a variety of challenging and abusive situations. Will he ever get escape?!

Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon
by Dhan Gopal Mukerji
Winner of the 1928 Newbery Medal
2.5 Stars

Just as Smoky was a horse telling his life story, Gay-Neck is the story of a...pigeon. Yes, a pigeon. I went into the book with very low expectations and was pleasantly surprised. Gay-Neck is a carrier pigeon in India who has various adventures and serves as a messenger in World War I. Mukerji shared several interesting tidbits about Indian cultures, Buddhism, and raising carrier pigeons.  This is also the first of the Newbery books set in other countries where the author is actually from the country he's describing (India), which means less painful stereotyping.

The Trumpeter of Krakow
by Eric P. Kelly
Winner of the 1929 Newbery Medal
2.5 Stars

The Charnetski family escapes to Krakow after their home is attacked by Tartars, bringing with them their family heirloom--a pumpkin (okay, the actual heirloom may be hidden inside). They find a home with the help of a local scholar,  and essentially adopt the girl who lives upstairs with her uncle when he becomes fixated on the study of alchemy. This book definitely has the most interesting plot of all the Newbery Medal winners so far, but everything that happens in the book is just too convenient and simple. Also, the children are too sickeningly well-behaved, polite, and smart to be believable.

These first eight books have made me appreciate how much children's literature has changed and, in my opinion, improved. Of these books, The Voyage of Doctor Dolittle is the only one I can imagine handing to a child. I maybe would give Smoky the Cowhorse to a kid if hypothetical kid was really interested in horses and westerns, but it would hurt a bit.

On to the 1930s! First up is Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, which appears to be the memoirs of a doll. I'm sure you can appreciate how enthusiastic I am to begin.

Wish me luck. I think I'll need it.