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A few years ago I read a review for Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde. The plot intrigued me and I went to my local bookstore to check it out for myself. The salesclerk stopped me and would not allow me to get that book yet: first I had to read The Eyre Affair. I tried to argue that I hated the book Jane Eyre and never was able to get through it, so I didn't see how I could like a book with Jane so prominent the book's title played on her last name. But eventually the salesclerk won and I agreed to try the first book in the series first. Logic prevailed.

And then I began reading The Eyre Affair. Logic, as I knew it, flew out the window. And I willingly followed wherever Fforde decided to take me.

From the first sentence, Fforde makes it clear that his novel is set someplace...Other. Here, having a "face that can stop a clock" means not that you are hideously ugly, but that you have the ability to control how quickly or slowly time passes for you. Add to that the English/Russian Crimean War is ongoing, riots break out between marauding gangs of neo-classicists and surrealists, and you can clone your own dodo bird with a home splicing hit and you have the 1980s London I wish I had lived in. Turns out I want to be the protagonist, Thursday Next.

Thursday is a Crimean War veteran from the 1978 offensive, a former police officer, and current respected-in-her-field-but-her -field-is-maligned-almost-univ ersally Special Operations-27 aka a Literatec, those in charge of stopping black market sales of counterfeit books, poorly acted one-man-shows, and dreadful forged sequels and prequels of great books. Her life is rather mundane until she battles the third-most evil man on the planet, Acheron Hades. She really had no choice. After their first battle Thursday realizes that she needs to get out of London and decides to move back to Swindon, where she grew up. Swindon is definitely more...Other than London. But it is here that many of the novel's early strands begin to take shape and the plot really takes off. How does Jane Eyre fit into the novel? I'm not going to spoil it for you, but just know that books and the characters they contain are alive.

The Eyre Affair is one of the only books I've ever read that has prodded me into researching different aspects of history I never knew about and read other books and novels I had only briefly considered. Can you enjoy The Eyre Affair without having read Jane Eyre? Of course. The necessary elements are recapped in the plot. But to truly understand the vast world Fforde has created, to catch all the word play and allusions Fforde uses, and to get the most out of the book, you too will find yourself digging into matters you thought you had left behind in college and gain a new appreciation of them. Fforde is a master craftsman, story teller and educator. He entertains by showing you how much you don't know, and then challenges you to find out for yourself so that you too can be in on the joke. A logical coup de force for a book with a seemingly absurd premise.

Yes, logic as I knew it flew out the window when I first read The Eyre Affair, but a new, better logic replaced it. Now, if only I could clone a dodo, my life will be complete.

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