New Zealand Reviews

Nice and easy

Jasper Fforde is a nice man. Not exactly a stunning accolade or a particularly punchy opening line, but nonetheless, the truth. There is an unaffected innocence about him, a feeling that he wouldn't hurt another soul; wouldn't be capable of doing so. The 41-year-old English author's entire being positively reeks of that blandly descriptive but underrated quality.

It's there in the way he greets me when I meet him at an inner city Auckland hotel. All arms and legs and big smiles, the lanky and slightly goofy Fforde strides into the foyer and apologises for being fractionally late. It's there in the relaxed and professional way he conducts himself throughout the interview; the unfeigned affability. Although my time with Fforde is short, I can tell he has a good heart. This pleasant demeanour of his shines through again when he's having his photos taken and he asks what poses we'd like him to strike, hamming it up behind a piano. It sounds clichéd, but Fforde is a likeable guy who writes likeable books.

Fforde was in Auckland recently to promote his second book, Lost in a Good Book, which carries on from where The Eyre Affair, his wacky debut novel that won the 2002 New Talent WHSmith Book Award, left off. That book was filled with a host of weird and wonderful things; a Welsh republic, a Crimean War that still rages, regenerated Dodo's and Literary Detectives like feisty lead character Thursday Next, who fight to keep works of literature safe from vandalism. He's prompted comparisons to that great doyen of British sci-fi/fantasy/humour, Douglas Adams, the creator of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. US magazine Entertainment Weekly named him as one of the members of its 'It' list for 2002. This puts Fforde in the same league as Philip Pullman, Anna Patchett, Stephen Carter, Ian McEwan and, of course Eminem, who all appeared on the list. Fforde is typically nonplussed by all this attention.

"I'm not in the same league. I'm not. I'm clearly not. I'm not selling their kinds of books. It's nice. I don't know who says these things, but it's nice to be compared to Douglas. I have a huge amount of respect for Douglas Adams but I'm really taking lots of little bits from everywhere."

Spiritually mean?

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Again, Fforde's inherent niceness comes to the fore.

"By this I mean people who think they are wonderful warm human beings but that's only what they want you to think. The moment your back is turned they're screaming at some poor hotel porter who hasn't opened the door for them or something. Those sorts of people. They're quite easily to spot. People who don't think of others."

Working in the film industry he had plenty of opportunities to see this type of behaviour in all its glory. Being Jasper Fforde, instead of using a 'spiritually mean' example to illustrate his point he uses a 'spiritually generous' example, drawn from the most unlikely of sources.

"I worked on Eyes Wide Shut with Tom Cruise. We were walking down the corridor and I was down the other end and Cruise was walking up. In front of him was a script girl who had been working on the film for months. No one else was around. All of a sudden the girl dropped her scripts and a thousand pieces of paper fell to the floor. Cruise took two quick steps and started to help her pick up her paper. He was just doing what one would do if one were a pleasant person, it wasn't let's look around let's see if anyone was watching. And you think maybe he's alright."

While Fforde was working on films he was thinking about writing books. Although he had wanted to be in the film industry from the age of ten, what he really wanted to get into was the storytelling industry. The reality didn't live up to the expectation, though. He discovered that the film industry was nothing like he thought it was going to be. Sure it pays well and the opportunities for travel are fantastic, but you have to contend with sticky-fingered producers and first time directors who have to be schooled in the finer points of direction by cameramen, directors more interested in getting their first film under their belts rather than making a good film.

"I spent 20 years trying to make it like I wanted it to be; just fun. I think I was really just interested in story and when you get down to storytelling in a book with no one else involved, with just the reader and me, it's a very pure form of storytelling. It's exciting, it's fun."

If that's not an apt description of the true nature of Jasper Fforde then I don't know what is.

Aidan Rasmussen