The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde ought to be a pretty easy review to write. Mostly because it was brilliant. Indeed, it did everything it should have done and much, much more. A book rife with word play, jokes, linguistic trickery, punnery is always going to appeal to me, but they're also not necessarily easy to do and make funny. Fforde succeeded with no difficulty, I couldn't help but laugh out loud on many occasions. Even the title's good, now I've had it explained to me (seriously, unless you're Heston Blumenthal, how can you make frying an egg that different?)
That's all well and good, but it also needs a point. And a plot. And maybe some characters too. Again, boxes all well and truly ticked. The idea of nursery crimes (rhymes with... geddit?), new twists on old tales, constant references and in-jokes is inspired. Retellings and reimaginings of fairy stories and folk tales is nothing new, but this didn't feel like it had been done before. The plot also worked too, it was nicely paced and kept up a sense of mystery, as well as deftly skewering many conventions of crime novels throughout. A sense of tongue firmly in cheek was there, as well as paying respects to other works with appreciative nods towards them. I thought it was a nice touch. And the characters were also great - memorable, interesting and well-drawn.
They ranged from the utterly mad to the suprisingly uninteresting (by which I mean normal) and wonderfully likeable everyman hero, Jack Spratt (the names were by turns amusing and clever throughout). Indeed, DI Spratt is quintessentially British – unassuming, polite, nice, I could go on – he fits nicely alongside the likes of Arthur Dent, Bilbo Baggins, Tim from The Office (not that Martin Freeman is typecast in any way) and is refreshing as well precisely because he is happily married and lacks any real personality disorders or quirks.
In short, it was bloody brilliant and I very much literally couldn't put it down. Not bad for a book set in Reading. And on the basis of this, it's definitely nothing to be ashamed of.
Book number: 9
Title: The Big Over Easy
Author: Jasper Fforde
Category: Charlotte's choice
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