I really don’t know how it has happened, but somehow the Jasper Fforde books have escaped my notice – until now. I have just had my first Fforde encounter – and what a treat it was. As it was published back in 2001, it could well be that I’m the last person in the country to read The Eyre Affair, but if by any chance you have also missed it then I urge you to put that right.

This book is so original, so utterly different to any other book I’ve ever read, that it’s hard to know how to set about describing it. It is set in Britain in an alternative 1985, in a Britain that is both very familiar and disturbingly different. If you love books and you enjoy being made to laugh, this is one for you. It has Monty Python qualities of outrageous, unexpected humour, combined with very clever plot development: low, slapstick fun, combined with an intelligent literary theme.

I don’t want to say any more because to do so might well spoil some of the many surprises in store. It’s not even easy to clearly identify the genre; it is humour, crime, fantasy, science fiction, romance, adventure and literary reference all rolled into one.

The author’s website www.jasperfforde.com is as refreshingly different as his books. I read there that he received 76 rejections from publishers before he finally had The Eyre Affair accepted. It’s difficult to know how the keen-to-be-published writer should react to that. Should it be taken as proof that persistence is the best weapon in a new writer’s armoury, or does it make one despair about the inability of publishers to spot real talent and make one press on with self-publishing?

What really pleased me was to find that Jasper Fforde has gone on to have ten more novels published – I’m looking forward to every one.

Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving 

Coming across a new book by John Irving always gets me interested, but these days I have to be careful that I’m not buying the same book twice because ‘new’ may not be the right word.  In typical current fashion the publishers have had three bites at the printed-word cherry, issuing the hardback version, then the  ‘perfect paperback’ in June and then the standard paperback. And I don’t suppose it will be long before more editions of the paperback appear. 

Irving is a writer that is hard to ignore, even if one should wish to, because not only do his books usually cause a stir, but they have often formed the basis for very successful films, notably Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany.   

My first encounter with him was almost 30 years ago when his The World According to Garp became an international bestseller that established his name. It rattled along with a cast of wonderfully eccentric characters caught up in bizarre situations. He stuck in my mind as being as unusual as some of his characters. How many top-selling authors started out dyslexic, became an Assistant Professor of English and have been inducted into the American Wrestling Hall of Fame? 

Last Night in Twisted River at 672 pages is a serious lump of a book.  If you ever find yourself short of a brick to hurl through a jeweller’s window, this should do the trick.  

The story covers 50 years in the lives of three generations of one family and starts in a remote logging camp in the 1950s where a young boy accidentally shoots the girlfriend of the local constable. Father and son go on the run pursued by the constable – a chase that lasts for decades. 

The problem with the book is that it is written in sections that do not follow on, but tell of the same events from the point of view of the different characters. This resulted, for me at least, in the need to re-read whole passages – and I can’t be the only one to finish the book and feel the need to immediately re-read the first chapter. Given the size of the book this resulted in a massive reading exercise that became more of an endurance exercise than a pleasure.  You don’t so much read this book as let it occupy a large chunk of your life.  Was it worth the time and effort?  Probably not.  It lacks the pace and impact of Irving’s early books and, despite the long time spent in their company, I didn’t find the characters particularly involving. 

The complex structure of the book may demonstrate the technical competence of the author, but the reader is called upon to demonstrate a high level of determination.

Mad Dogs & Englishmen by Sir Ranulph Fiennes 

This book took me by surprise.  I had somehow formed the impression, perhaps from the title, that I was going to read about some of the bizarre antics of the author and his more eccentric ancestors.  That impression was not challenged by the cover of the book, which reveals very little about its content: there is a photograph of the author, another of him on Mount Everest, a couple of one-liners from Adrian Chiles and Robin Hanbury-Tenison and a blurb that simply states “Ranulph Fiennes tells the story of his unconventional, exceptional family, and reveals the ingredients for the man described by the Guiness Book of Records as ‘the world’s greatest living explorer’”.  It’s not often that the cover of a book undersells its contents, but this one does.  

Many of Sir Ranulph’s exploits are well known (running those seven marathons in seven days on seven continents just four months after a heart attack and a double by-pass; climbing Mount Everest at the age of 65; being the first person to walk to both Poles; cutting off his own frost-damaged fingertips with an electric saw in his garden shed) and he is a very accomplished writer, this being his 21^st book.  He is a truly extraordinary man, but this book is not about him, it is about his truly extraordinary family.  

His full name is Ranulph Twistleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, the Wykehams and Twistletons having joined the Fiennes (originally de Fiennes) clan by marriage.  He can trace his aristocratic family tree back to two generations before the Emperor Charlemagne (768-814).  This book takes us through the history of England from that time to the date of the author’s birth.  It does so generation-by-generation, monarch-by-monarch, with the main features of each monarch’s reign listed and analysed in a very reader-friendly way.  It is history made accessible and fascinating.  It provides a different level of insight resulting from the author’s access to a vast volume of family records accumulated over the centuries. 

In the reign of each monarch, Fiennes are there, prodding, guiding, fighting, making their very significant presence felt, on both sides of The Channel: king-makers and king-breakers.  The sheer scope of this book could make it an indigestible list of dates and names, but it isn’t.  The author has a light touch.  There is humour, and his empathy with the people of each period shines through.  He has the knack of pulling out facts that stick in the mind.  Here are a few examples. 

During his 10-year reign, Richard I, who spoke only French, spent just six months in England. 

A Fiennes ancestor was a signatory of Magna Carta.  800 years later Oliver Fiennes (cousin of Ranulph), in his position of Dean of Lincoln Cathedral, had one of the four original copies in his care.  

At the battle of Crecy senior officers on both sides were members of the Fiennes family.  It rained heavily before the battle which gave the English archers an advantage; they removed the strings from their bows and kept them dry in their hats.  Their opponents used crossbows that couldn’t be so readily unstrung; the wet strings stretched and the weapons became ineffective. 

By 1536 Henry VIII was suffering from the effects of malaria, smallpox, migraines, pus-filled leg ulcers and his weight had shot up to over 20 stones.  He was carried about by servants and hauled upstairs by a system of ropes and pulleys – and he still had four wives to go! 

Life expectancy was very poor in Tudor times.  A well-known teacher/preacher, John Colet, Dean of St Paul’s, was the only one of his mother’s twenty-two children to reach maturity. 

Just before the Battle of Worcester in 1651, Charles II contracted Worcester clothiers to outfit his army.  The £453 bill was never paid – until June 2008 when it was settled by Prince Charles.  In that battle the three colonels in Cromwell’s Model Army were Twistleton brothers. 

During WWII, after a successful North African campaign, the Scots Greys regiment joined the Eighth Army for the invasion of Italy.  The three colonels of the Greys were called Twistleton, Wykeham and Fiennes! 

A remarkable book: a remarkable family.