“At four in the morning, I was woken by a phone call from my younger brother.”
This opening will not be a good look on me, but here we go. Have you ever read or seen something that you wanted to be bad? Has it then turned out to be good and, while you enjoyed it very much, there’s still a tinge of bitterness lingering? I hope that’s not just me. On we go…
Charley Sutherland was a child genius, speaking at eight months and reading the Russian classics by his fourth birthday. Not only was he reading them, he was understanding them too, and it quickly transpires he’s a genius of literary theory. He, however, has a secret. When he focuses on a character in a book, he can bring them to life, be it Sherlock Holmes or the Cat in the Hat.
Now at twenty-six and a lecturer at a Wellington university, he tries to keep a handle on his ability, but sometimes he loses control. That’s how he’s found himself chasing Uriah Heep around his office. He calls on his brother Rob to help, as he does so often before. But this time things will not be so easy. It turns out that Charley is not the only summoner after all, and when literary characters begin causing havoc around the city and threatening to destroy the world, it’s up to Rob and Charley to stop them before they do.
The reason for my slightly sour introduction is that simply it feels like Jasper Fforde has done this idea so comprehensively that anyone else trying for it would simply look like a copycat. Sure, Tom Holt did something like it in the nineties, and the Inkheart books by Cornelia Funke overlap in the timeline with Thursday Next, and we now have Pages & Co as well, which is redoing the idea for children, but it seems that it would be impossible now to do a story like this without making firm acceptance of Fforde. Granted, there is a brief mention of him in the book’s acknowledgements, but Parry seems to have been more into the Inkheart books instead. This is all fine – sometimes people have the same ideas without knowing, but you’d think that someone might’ve mentioned it.
I don’t really know why I’m so bitter. I think it’s because the idea of fictional characters interacting with the real world is such a good one, I’m just furious and jealous I didn’t do it first, and I’ll never be able to do it now without aping Fforde or Parry or Funke. This is a hugely competent debut novel, with rules and a world that is desperately moreish. Being able to have characters move out of fiction into the real world is, really, all it has in common with Fforde, so it can stand alone and does so masterfully. I’ve read very little set in New Zealand, so that’s a fun thing (although it’s never clear just why British literature would be so desperate to find its way to Wellington, other than “that’s where the main characters are”), and I love the idea that each fictional character emerges imbued with their metaphors becoming all-too-real. Heathcliff’s eyes really do burn. If you think Uriah Heep is a bit of a shapeshifter, then when he comes out, he’ll be one literally. It’s a shame the Invisible Man is only mentioned in passing, rather than a character himself. This is most fun with the Darcys, as there are five of them, each with a different personality based on different readings. It’s just joyful.
The choice of characters is great, too. Sutherland is a Victorian scholar, and Parry must love the era too, as a lot of the characters come from Dickens, but we also get to meet Narnia’s White Witch, Lancelot of Arthurian legend, Wilde’s Dorian Gray and Matilda Wormwood, the latter of whom just makes me wonder how the laws of copyright lie. Is she fair game because, while she’s not out of copyright, her author is dead? You wouldn’t stick Ron Weasley in here. The world’s logic constantly holds up, and it’s silly in places, but nothing is throwaway, and everything comes back to mean something later on. It’s funny, and it’s interesting to have done it from the point of view of Charley’s older brother, rather than in the third person or from Charley himself. It gives it further depth.
For all my mutterings about it just being a copy, I’m wrong, and I’m actually quite happy to have been proved wrong, as the more I think about it, the more I love it. By the novel’s end, the big threat has passed (with a fantastic payoff as to who is behind it all – once you know, it couldn’t have been anyone else), but I’d be curious to slip back into the world again and find out what else it has to offer.
I really must stop judging books by their covers.
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