Product Details

• Published on: 2002-02-01
• Format: Bargain Price
• Original language: English
• Binding: Audio Cassette

From Amazon.com
Penzler Pick, January 2002: When I first heard the premise of this unique mystery, I doubted that a first-time author could pull off a complicated caper involving so many assumptions, not the least of which is a complete suspension of disbelief. Jasper Fforde is not only up to the task, he exceeds all expectations.

Imagine this. Great Britain in 1985 is close to being a police state. The Crimean War has dragged on for more than 130 years and Wales is self-governing. The only recognizable thing about this England is her citizens' enduring love of literature. And the Third Most Wanted criminal, Acheron Hades, is stealing characters from England's cherished literary heritage and holding them for ransom.

Bibliophiles will be enchanted, but not surprised, to learn that stealing a character from a book only changes that one book, but Hades has escalated his thievery. He has begun attacking the original manuscripts, thus changing all copies in print and enraging the reading public. That's why Special Operations Network has a Literary Division, and it is why one of its operatives, Thursday Next, is on the case.

Thursday is utterly delightful. She is vulnerable, smart, and, above all, literate. She has been trying to trace Hades ever since he stole Mr. Quaverley from the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and killed him. You will only remember Mr. Quaverley if you read Martin Chuzzlewit prior to 1985. But now Hades has set his sights on one of the plums of literature, Jane Eyre, and he must be stopped.

How Thursday achieves this and manages to preserve one of the great books of the Western canon makes for delightfully hilarious reading. You do not have to be an English major to be pulled into this story. You'll be rooting for Thursday, Jane, Mr. Rochester--and a familiar ending. --Otto Penzler

From Publishers Weekly
This novel might be called "James Bond Meets Harry Potter in the Twilight Zone." In fact, the reader plays "name that literary reference" through most of this zany work, where characters wander around in time from the Crimean War through the present and into the future, and in and out of novels including, of course, Jane Eyre. The narrator, Tuesday Next, is a tough, gun-totin' heart-of-gold heroine with a pet dodo, a true love she has refused to acknowledge and a brilliant, dotty scientist uncle named Mycroft. Her job is to rescue literary characters kidnapped out of books from being wiped off the face of every copy of a work by tracking down and outwitting the purely evil Asheron Hades and Goliath Corporation greedyman Jack Shit. Throughout, discussions of who really wrote Shakespeare's plays abound, along with send-ups of every literary genre from the highest to the lowest brow. Sastre's reading works particularly well because she's good at the straight narrative, while the nature of the book's language makes melodramatic voices for the other bizarre characters. Simultaneous release with the Viking hardcover (Forecasts, Dec. 17, 2001).
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
"So unusual you've got to read it to believe it; and please do," trumpets London's Bookseller. Unusual, indeed; in Fforde's debut, set in 1985 in an alternate London, literature is (refreshingly) so important that you can get punished for forging Byronic verses. Then someone starts kidnapping literary characters Jane Eyre's disappearance is particularly traumatic and Special Operative Thursday Next must stop this before it's too late.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

The Chuzzlewit Caper?
For the first half of the novel, one might have asked if it had the wrong name, but by the time the book ends, one can probably agree that "The Eyre Affair" is at least as good a title as any. "The Eyre Affair" is Jasper Fforde's first novel, which was published in July of 2001. Fforde creates an alternate world, with many similarities to go with some glaring differences, keeping the reader off-balance, yet strangely at home at the same time. Combining alternate reality, with spy thriller, with mystery, with some literary classics, this unusual book makes for a most unique and enjoyable experience. As I have not, as of yet, read any of the sequels in the series, I cannot speak for how well it holds up, but I can easily recommend this one.

The setting of this novel is in a world very much like our own, but with some bizarre twists. In no particular order, this would include recreating Dodos and cloning them for pets, never-ending discussions about who wrote Shakespeare's plays (of course this happens in our world, but not to this extent), Wales as a socialist republic, and an ongoing Crimean War. Our heroine is Thursday Next, a Literary Detective (SO-27) one of 30 departments of Special Operations to handle various areas of police work. The top 20 departments are restricted, i.e. they are known to exist, but only in a few cases do people know what they actually do.

In addition to the alternate reality, there is an unusual family and personal life to deal with. Thursday's father was a Colonel in the ChronoGuard, but had turned rogue and is being chased by his former colleagues. He has a habit of dropping in on Thursday and halting time when he does so. Her uncle likes to invent things, including a device which allows people to enter works of literature (this has happened accidentally to some people, including Thursday, but this allows the person to pick the time and the place). Her brother, like Thursday, was in the Crimean War, but unlike her, he was killed. The man she loves, Landon Parke-Laine, who gave testimony which led to her brother being blamed for a mistake which caused a tremendous loss of life during an important battle.

Thursday is temporarily assigned to SO-5 to deal with a super-criminal, Acheron Hades, a man she had the misfortune to meet many years ago, and she is one of the few to have ever seen him in person. He is known to have special powers, including the ability to avoid being seen on camera, and he is able to confuse even Special Operations agents to the point where he is able to escape, usually after killing the agent whose trust he has gained. Thursday has been called in because Acheron is believed to have stolen the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit. The story follows Thursday as she follows, sometimes officially, sometimes unofficially, Hades and it takes her through time paradoxes, kidnappings, government bureaucracy, the war and peace movements, and of course into Jane Eyre

With all the strange inventions, and odd plotlines, it was somewhat disappointing that the end was rather predictable, but it was still very fun to read. Thursday and her family make for wonderful characters, and Hades was a great villain. Many of the other characters are somewhat two-dimensional, but one needs a few normal people to play against. This novel is far from perfect, but if you are in the mood for some crazy adventure and have run out of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, this is one you may want to give a try.

Loving affair
"The barriers between reality and fiction are softer than we think." This statement just about sums up "The Eyre Affair," a bizarre blend of mystery, fantasy, alternate universe novel, satire, and a dash of horror and scifi. With its likeable heroine and delightful plot, this is one that bibliophiles will drool over. It's sort of as if Terry Pratchett wrote mysteries.

It takes place an alternate world where the Crimean War has lasted over a century, vampirism and lycanthropy are like diseases, time can be warped, and people can fall in and out of books and plays -- and if it's the original work, it will change all the other copies. Thursday Next is an agent for a special division devoted to literature, and is on the trail of the villainous Acheron Hades after the theft of the manuscript of "Martin Chuzzlewit" by Charles Dickens. To complicate matters more, her old boyfriend Landen has reentered the picture, and the obnoxious Schitt of the powerful Goliath Corporation is following Thursday.

Hades seems to have been killed, but Thursday is almost sure that he isn't. It turns out she's right -- he kidnaps her aunt and "mad as pants" uncle Mycroft Next, who has just made a machine that allows people to wander into pieces of literature. Hades's plot is to use the machine to disrupt literature as we know it. First he kills a minor character from "Martin Chuzzlewit," and then kidnaps Jane Eyre (in this parallel universe, the novel has a very different ending). Thursday Next teams up with the brooding Rochester and an odd bunch of characters to save Jane -- and all the other great works of literature.

This is one of the best-conceived and best-executed ideas in recent years. A lot of readers probably won't understand all of the literary jokes and in-jokes (it sounds snobby, but if you don't get something then just skip it), as well as some that anybody can understand, like the invention of the banana. The idea of high art as pop culture is delightfully done, like the guy with the "Hand of God" tattoo, or the door-to-door Baconian missionaries, or a John Milton convention. Take a sprinkling of real-life pop culture, make it art-inclined, and that's what you get.

One of the best things about this book is that it overflows with promise for sequels in this universe. Time travel, a chilling scene with a lisping vampire, lycanthropy vaccines, and the wealth of literature are all dealt with, but not so thoroughly that it can't be used again. The writing style is spare and fast-moving, sort of like Terry Pratchett's but more detailed. The dialogue is very good, with a lot of good quotables.

Thursday Next is a likable female lead, very hard-boiled, tough and smart, but with a vulnerable side. Uncle Mycroft is just delightful, mad as pants! Acheron Hades is one of those villains who loves evil for its own sake (well, with a name like "Hades," what can you expect?), and people who like a complex reason for a person to be bad won't like him. "I'm just... well, differently moralled, that's all."

Jasper Fforde's first novel is a slightly frothy, book-hopping, tongue-in-cheek novel. It may not be a work of literature equal to "Jane Eyre," but it's a supremely entertaining and promising one.

A Review Of �The Eyre Affair� by Jasper Fforde
This is Fforde's (yeah, two "F"s) first published novel and the first one I've read of his, and I think I'm hooked. It's a novel that has characters named Thursday Next and Jack Schitt; where fictional characters become real and the real can step into fictional stories; where there exists Special Police Forces for Literary Detectives, Neighbourly Disputes, Temporal Stability, and other troublesome matters. It's a silly, literary story written with a Douglas Adams twist: science-fiction, fantasy, thriller, and humour that only hose mad about books may appreciate.

The plot involves Thursday Next, a LiteraTec, investigating the disappearance of the original Martin Chuzzlewit manuscript, which leads to the theft of the original Jane Eyre manuscript. The story has elements of murder, espionage, war, romance, vampires and werewolves, time travel, and off-the-cuff humour, such as:
"Why is a raven like a writing desk?"
"Because Poe wrote on both?"

Hahahaha! Then there's some dialogue like:
"Haven't I seen your face somewhere else?"
"No, it's always been right here on the front of my head."

Well, all of it isn't that corny, and although I didn't laugh out loud, it did cause some grins.

Highly recommended for those with a literary background, who appreciate off-the-wall humour, and who don't take reality seriously.