Lay Away Book Special: The end of an affair

The Eyre Affair's ending is a mixed bag. It offers a marked improvement from the lull mentioned in the previous entry, and the plot threads are all nicely snipped. It also involves some serious deus ex machina.

This last minute plot device involves the appearance of the lawyer from Jane Eyre objecting to Landen's wedding to Daisy out of nowhere. He has valid grounds to object, since Daisy's already married, but it's far too neat.

What's worse, since Thursday changed the story of Jane Eyre by bringing Jane and Rochester together in the end, it seems that the book has continued to grow and expand. When Thursday asks Mrs. Nakajima (the book tour guide, who is able to melt into books at will) how the couple is she tells her that 10 years have passed and they've had kids. The book would go on, since the main character of the first person Jane Eyre (Jane), is back in it, but it raises a troubling question: When a book is so altered when does it end?

Perhaps the book simply ends with Rochester and Jane being married, and that's that. But to be so quick about dismissing this issue leaves out any clarity as to what happens to characters after the book's story has been read/consumed.

Up until the reveal that Jane and Rochester are happily wedded with children, it's suggested (by Rochester himself on page ) that the characters of the book more or less die after the story's told. Is the newly minted couple so long lived because the main character is present? But what then happened to Jane in the original Jane Eyre? Because Fforde implies that the characters go through the story on an endless loop, there must be an end point and a start point for said loop. Living together for 10 years into the book world future does not seem to be the solid ending that the very rules of the book world require. Where do they fit in their playing out their parts in the book?

It's not something that everyone reads for, but when an author goes to the trouble of creating a unique world, it's fair to hope that the basic mechanics of that world will be clear. It's not necessary that an author explain his world in depth in his novel, but he should be clear enough on the rules himself that he not violate them. Or even appear to violate them without some sort of set up. Fforde provides none.

So, overall, The Eyre Affair is an all right book with a mostly excellent villain. However, Fforde's alternate world and explanation of the worlds that books conjure are just not fleshed out enough.