The Eyre Affair
The Eyre Affair book cover

The Eyre Affair

Hardcover – January 28, 2002

by
Price
$9.00
Format
Hardcover
Pages
374
Publisher
Viking Adult
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-0670030644
Dimensions
5.9 x 1.32 x 8.56 inches
Weight
13.6 ounces

Description

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 HSurreal and hilariously funny, this alternate history, the debut novel of British author Fforde, will appeal to lovers of zany genre work (think Douglas Adams) and lovers of classic literature alike. The scene: Great Britain circa 1985, but a Great Britain where literature has a prominent place in everyday life. For pennies, corner Will-Speak machines will quote Shakespeare; Richard III is performed with audience participation x85 la Rocky Horror and children swap Henry Fielding bubble-gum cards. In this world where high lit matters, Special Operative Thursday Next (literary detective) seeks to retrieve the stolen manuscript of Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit. The evil Acheron Hades has plans for it: after kidnapping Next's mad-scientist uncle, Mycroft, and commandeering Mycroft's invention, the Prose Portal, which enables people to cross into a literary text, he sends a minion into Chuzzlewit to seize and kill a minor character, thus forever changing the novel. Worse is to come. When the manuscript of Jane Eyre, Next's favorite novel, disappears, and Jane herself is spirited out of the book, Next must pursue Hades inside Charlotte Brontx89's masterpiece. The plethora of oddly named characters can be confusing, and the story's episodic nature means that the action moves forward in fits and starts. The cartoonish characters are either all good or all bad, but the villain's comeuppance is still satisfying. Witty and clever, this literate romp heralds a fun new series set in a wonderfully original world. (Jan. 28)Forecast: With a six-city author tour, a well-conceived Web site at www.thursdaynext.com and crossover appeal to Brontx89 fans, this is likely to attract more attention than the usual first genre novel. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From School Library Journal Adult/High School-A delightful first book in a proposed series set in an alternative and offbeat Britain of 1985 and featuring Literary Detective Thursday Next. England is still fighting the Crimean War with Imperialist Russia, and the prevailing culture is based on literature. When the original manuscript of Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit is stolen, it is a high crime indeed, and Next is called in to help catch the culprit. To make matters worse, her "mad as pants" but brilliant uncle has created a machine that could cause all kinds of literary mayhem. This title has a cast of complete nutters. Acheron Hades, the world's third most wanted villain, has just the right mix of evil and charm to make readers look forward to meeting the first and second most wanted. Be warned that minor passersby may come round again in this "mad tea party" of a story. The novel has the surrealism and satire of Douglas Adams, the nonsense and wordplay of Lewis Carroll, and the descriptive detail of Connie Willis. What sets Fforde's work apart, however, is its winsome heroine. This is a highly entertaining mystery with social satire, time travel, fantasy, science fiction, and romance thrown in to the well-written mix. Jane Halsall, McHenry Public Library District, IL Copyright 2002 Reed 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. ...a highly inventive, frequently hilarious and occasionally poignant tale. -- Rocky Mountain News , March 1, 2002 ...enough to entertain even the most dour lover of the classics. -- Ft. Worth Morning Star ...in the case of Jasper Fjorde's The Eyre Affair , my response is a resounding 'Hooray!' -- Demensions , January 2002 The Eyre Affair is too special to be abandoned when the back cover closes. -- The Onion , March 14, 2002 The Eyre Affair promises to be the start of a funny, entertaining series that combines high-brow knowledge with low-brow humor... -- San Antonio Express-News , February 3, 2002 A combination of fantasy, comedy, science fiction, Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut, Lewis Carroll, Monty Python and even 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'. -- The New York Times , April 1, 2002 A playful, jangling funhouse ride for the literary geek in all of us. -- Turkshead Review , January 2002 Combines elements of Monty Python, Harry Potter, Stephen Hawking and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but its quirky charm is all its own. -- Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal Lovers of great literature with a fondness for light genre fiction...will feel instantly at home in The Eyre Affair ... -- Los Angeles Times , March 18, 2002 Thursday is part Bridget Jones, part Nancy Drew and part Dirty Harry. Genuinely clever invention. Mr. Fforde has...found his own exuberant voice. -- Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Jasper Fforde traded a varied career in the film industry for staring vacantly out of the window and arranging words on a page. He lives and writes in Wales. The Eyre Affair was his first novel in the bestselling "Thursday Next" series. He is also the author of the "Nursery Crime" series. Read more

Features & Highlights

  • In a world where you can actually get lost (literally) in literature, Thursday Next, a notorious Special Operative in literary detection, races against time to stop the world's Third Most Wanted criminal from kidnapping characters, including Jane Eyre, from works of literature, forcing her to dive into the pages of a novel to stop literary homicide, in a wildly imaginative, mesmerizing thriller. 50,000 first printing.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

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Most Helpful Reviews

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A wild trip into an alternative universe.

Jasper Fforde has a rich imagination that moves in wacky directions, an off-the-wall sense of humor that never quits, and a deep knowledge and love of literature which give shape and substance to this hilarious "thing" he's created. Not really a mystery, sci-fi thriller, satire, or fluffy fantasy, this wild rumpus contains elements of all these but feels like a completely new genre. Fforde combines "real" people from the "historically challenged" world of his plot with characters from classic novels, adding dollops of word play, irony, literary humor, satire--and even a dodo bird--just for spice.

With "real" characters who can stop time or travel back and forth in it, hear their own names (the names here are really terrific!) from 1000 yards away, appear in duplicate before themselves to give advice, travel inside books, and change the outcome of history, the reader journeys through Fforde's looking glass into a different and far more literary universe than the one we know. Thursday Next, a SpecOp-27 in the Literary Detective Division of Special Operations, is looking for Acheron Hades, who has stolen the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and killed one of the characters in it, thereby changing the story forever. Thursday and the Literatecs are trying to prevent him from getting inside Jane Eyre and committing further murders.

If you have not read Jane Eyre recently, your pleasure in this book will be greatly enhanced if you look up a brief plot summary on-line before proceeding too far--the ending of Jane Eyre as we know it is different from the ending of Jane Eyre as Thursday Next knows it, and the differences themselves become a delightful part of this plot. Though some readers seem to feel that the book would benefit from a bit of pruning in order to strengthen its conclusion, that suggestion seems to me to be too much like Acheron Hades changing Martin Chuzzlewit or Jane Eyre--if you do that, something is irreparably lost--and this book is so much fun that I'd hate to lose even a single word! Mary Whipple
133 people found this helpful
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The Eyre Unfair

Argh. Argh. Argh.
That's the sound of a man who wanted desperately to like a book being bitterly disappointed. "The Eyre Affair" is a novel with what sounds like an interesting premise, but winds up reading like the bastard love-child of Woody Allen and Douglas Adams.
Of course, my disappointment is largely my own fault. I was sucked in by the jacket copy that sort of promised a romp through Jane Eyre in a world where people could enter works of fiction. For some reason I didn't stop to consider how patently ridiculous that idea is and how bad previous attempts at doing the same thing have been. Woody Allen tried it twice, once in a short piece and again in "Purple Rose of Cairo", and neither was particularly successful, so I don't know why I thought Fforde would be able to do any better.
Actually, I do. It was the protagonist's name: Thursday Next. To come up with a name like that, I thought he must be a genius.
What the jacket does not tell us is that a large portion of the plot hinges on time travel and huge, gaping paradoxes, a la Dirk Gently. Not that I mind such things, I just didn't expect them, and expecting them would have allowed me to suspend that particular logic detection system.
But these quibbles aside, there was a lot to like about "The Eyre Affair". I liked the smug feeling I got from "getting" most of the English Literature references sprinkled throughout. I liked Thursday's dotty old uncle, an inventor who accidentally merengued one of his assistants to death. I liked the idea of a world that treats Shakespeare's Richard III as a "Rocky Horror" costume fest.
Jasper Fforde's storytelling skills are breezy and fun, and he doesn't get too caught up in the cuteness of his own jokes; in fact, some of them are so subtle they hit you a few pages later. The characters are mostly interchangeable, with the exceptions of Thursday's dad, the chronoguardsman, Thursday herself, and Acheron Hades, the villain.
Hades deserves some attention here. He almost works as a bad guy, just for the sheer joy he gets from being a bad guy. But if this were a cartoon, he would be constantly turning to the camera and grinning, saying, "Ain't I evil?", or something equally obvious. This gets old fast and Fforde would do well to arrest it in later installments. Also, we are offered no proper explanation for Hades' powers, which include invisibility and the ability to pass through solid matter. Cool tricks, but the laws of fiction demand we know why he has these powers when no one else does.
I'm not sorry I read this and I wouldn't try to steer you away from it. But I do think you should have your Disbelief switch in the "Suspend" position when you start it. If you can get past the plot holes, you're in for a terrific ride.
63 people found this helpful
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Very Clever, but....

A lot of credit has to be given to Jasper Fforde for creating a parallel universe that is quite quirky and very fun to explore. England is embroiled in a 130 year war with Imperial Russia over the Crimean Penninsula. There is tension along the British border with the People's Republic of Wales--a totalitarian regime. French Revisionists are apparently traveling back in time to wipe out British heros (Churchill, Nelson etc). Long distance travel is done by zeppelin. People keep extinct creatures as pets (our heroine has a dodo, version 1.2). Uncle Mycroft invents a device that allows travel into a literary work. The world's third most evil man pulls a character out of Dicken's Martin Chuzzlewit and assassinates him. Richard III is performed a la Rocky Horror Picture Show. In short, there is a lot of stuff going on in this book and the reader needs to pay careful attention.
The first two-thirds of the book (the setup) is great fun. But the problem with the book is that Fforde cannot pull off an ending that equals the setup. Unfortunately, this seems to be a common woe of many "clever" books. It seems as though Fforde expended all his energy on creating this ultra-clever parallel universe and lost sight of the plot. I felt the ending was contrived and that is saying a lot in a book whose entire premise is contrivity.
I wish I could give the book five stars because I really like it. Maybe Fforde will deliver a more satisfactory climax in the sequal(s).
59 people found this helpful
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A Fun-filled Adventure

With the first page of this book, Fford caught my attention and held it fast until the last. I hated to see it end, but I was very happy to discover that it was only first in a series featuring Spec-Ops agent Thursday Next. Fford has created a blend of mystery, science fiction, and fantasy that is similar to Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently series. Fford's books even have the same irreverently sublime silliness, but with a decidedly literary bent.
The books are set in an alternate universe, one where England is the world greatest super power, but is held under the control of a shadowy mega-company called Goliath. The year is 1985, but it's unlike any 1985 you or I might remember. Technology is both far advanced and far behind. The Crimean War still drags on and the world's biggest superstars are authors. A special crime enforcement unit has been formed to deal with crimes that fall outside the usual boundaries of police jurisdiction. Thursday Next works for Spec-Ops 27, the Literary Division.
When the world's third most wanted criminal, Acheron Hades, finds a way to jump into the original manuscript of Dicken's MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT and assassinates Mr. Quaverley (a character you will only remember if you read the book before 1985), Thursday is assigned the case. It turns out that the assassination of Mr. Quaverley was only an example of what he was capable of, and when he jumps into JANE EYRE and kidnaps the title character, it's up to Thursday to save the beloved heroine...and the book.
I'll warn you now that you'll have to suspend belief while reading this book. It should be read as a fantasy first and foremost. It deals with time travel (Thursday's father is a Spec-Ops agent as well, but in the Chronoguard), cloned dodo's (Thursday's marshmallow loving pet Pickwick, version 1.2), and Shakespeare's Richard the Third is performed with audience participation ala Rocky Horror. If you can get past some of the more absurd qualities of the book, you're in for a true literary treat. Fford writes assuming his readers will get his numerous high lit in-jokes, and while I'm sure I missed a few, he provided me with many laugh out loud moments. While his world is bizarre and occasionally hard to swallow, it's also amazingly imaginative and fun, Fun, FUN! Thursday is a strong, complicated, and entirely likeable protagonist and I'm sure we have a lot to look forward to from her.
52 people found this helpful
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Don't Believe Those Four-Star Reviews!

Cliché-riddled writing and derivative characters trapped in a mildly-original though poorly-executed narrative. I never believed in protagonist Thursday Next, I never believed in the novel's universe. Contrary to other reviewers, this book is NOT Douglas Adams, NOT Jonathan Lethem, NOT Monty Python, NOT Stephen Hawking, NOT gripping, NOT witty, and certainly NOT Bronte. AVOID.
27 people found this helpful
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Ridiculous.

I bought a copy of this volume under the (as it turns out, false) impression that it would provide me with some level of entertainment, a mindless nugget between one thing and another.
Let me assure you that it is, indeed, mindless. While full marks must go to Mr. Fforde for the admittedly excellent premise (evil overlord wreaks havoc by stealing classic manuscripts and transporting himself into their pages, more or less) and for actually getting the thing published, be warned that it has nothing whatsoever to do with sly winks, "postmodernism played out as raw, howling farce" or, indeed, story or narrative.
The antagonist, Thursday Next (a dull play on words, along with most of the other characters, notably Jack Schitt) is completely devoid of character and personality, with a contrived background that would make even the most toad-like of Hollywood hacks wince. Nothing ever really happens in the story - it simply plays out as a jumble of clichéd encounters and undergraduate references to some of the most boring/obscure pieces of literature on the planet, a hodgepodge of puerile jokes formulated by an author with far too many volumes of reference on his shelves, and not nearly enough books.
The very thought that I wasted a day reading this rubbish sets my teeth on edge. Only hip posers whose literary backgrounds began and ended when they were forced to read 'Catcher In The Rye' in year nine and now figure that they know everything and can go back to bleaching their hair and learning to roll cigarettes.
If the core of the book appeals to you - ostensibly wacky adventures of a private investigator in an ostensibly wacky parallel universe - you'd do far better to read either of Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently books. If you already have, then it's time to move on, because you won't find a shadow of those masterpieces here.
21 people found this helpful
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Engaging -- English Lit Majors Should Delight in It

It's no small task that Jasper Fforde was able to create a world where genetic engineering has reached a point where people can own dodos as pets, Britain has been at war with Russia for 130 years, time travel is a common occurrence, and most incredible, English literature is actually pertinent to modern life.
This book is a lot of fun, the arguments about Shakespeare's Plays' true authorship, plus other satrical pokes at the world of English lit should keep any bibliophile snickering, and if the characters get out of control sometimes, well that happens with a first novel.
Ultimately I found myself thinking about this book when I wasn't reading it, and looking forward to getting back to it. There are some laughs, a fun plot, an incredible setting, and just enough jibes at literary deconstructionists to make one feel smart, which is not generally how one leaves the world of literary deconstruction.
Others have already outlined the plot well enough. If you liked Mark Frost's, List of Seven, or China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, then land somewhere in between, add some whimsy and sit down to a really fun read. Let's call Fford's new sub-genre, Lit-Punk.
It looks as if this is going to be a series, and I look forward to Fford's next book. Thursday Next is a great character and now, with his bizarre world established, Fford can sharpen his chops on more off-the-wall humor -- not because his work needs it, because we all do.
21 people found this helpful
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Go read this fab book!

This is a great book that I wanted to read again as soon as I had finished! Once you start on the adventure it is very difficult to leave and I just wanted to keep on reading and reading.
I loved the characters - not only the fab Thursday Next and her pet dodo but also suppporting roles like Bowden Cable, Braxton Hicks, Felix8, the wonderfully evil Acheron Hades and of course Mr Edward Rochester. The whole story is a funny and clever mix of our world and a world of books and literature, with plenty of hilarious jokes, some illuminating ideas and a whole lot of fun. I found myself laughing out loud at times and giggling to myself at others. The author loves to play with words and names and great fun can be had spotting the gags and allusions. There are also, should you wish to see them, some serious undertones but they seem to be there for your own interpretation.
If you like adventure, literature, inspiration, humour, Shakespeare, dodos, Dickens, Wordsworth, prose portals, theatre, the Crimean war, films, cars, airships, detectives, Swindon, Bronte, books, inspiration and fun - then you should read this!
14 people found this helpful
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An imagination almost unmatched in modern fiction.

I just love this series -- this is the first book in Jasper Fford's "Thursday Next" series. The most recent copy I purchased (which reminded me to review it) was a gift -- I've actually given copies to several friends, which I've only ever done with one or two other books, that's how much I hope other people will read it. Jasper Fforde has created a really complete, self-contained surreal alternate reality -- a world in which people take the arts so seriously that Cubists and Surrealists sometimes come to blows, and where story digressions into Welsh cheese-smuggling (especially in later books) makes me think of a world where Wallace and Gromit's cheese addiction has caused them to "break bad". He keeps building and revealing more details, humor, and subtleties in subsequent books in the series.

It's not science fiction, it's not "fantasy" -- it's a bit as if you were Dorothy in Oz, and instead of getting a peek behind the curtain at the Wizard ("Ignore that man behind the curtain!"), you get to peek behind the curtain of the world of books, seeing the hidden machinery that makes all of literature possible, including literary characters with surprising personal lives during their "time off" (when no one is actively reading their character), crimes against literature (Thursday Next is a Literary Detective), and in later books in the series, marketplaces for lightly-used plot-devices and retired characters.

Fforde has a great sense of humor, and it occurs to me now that the series is a bit like Gulliver's Travels, including a dash here and there of social commentary and political satire. (It's a sad commentary that it takes a surreal, humorous piece of fiction to conceive of a "Common Sense Party" in politics.)

In this volume as in all the subsequent ones, the story and classic British humor are immensely entertaining by themselves, but the more familiar you are with English literary classics, the more of the inside jokes and sly references you'll "get". I probably get about half of them, and that's more than enough to find the stories hilarious and clever. I'm in the U.S., but I've purchased many of the books in their British editions from Amazon UK just to ensure that I get all the delights of Jasper Fforde's wordsmithing without the translations and "improvements" typically added by American publishers.

In recent years Fforde has tried to start other series and story-lines, without as much success as this series -- I really wish he would return to THIS world and bring his wit to bear on more mysteries and more literary genres.
13 people found this helpful
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Terrific Premise Wasted

First time author Fforde starts with a wonderful premise and a winningly whimsical tone...and proceeds to entirely botch the execution.
If you've read the flap copy you've got the premise: in a rabidly bibliophile alternate universe UK, a new invention allows you to enter original manuscripts of great literature and, well, muck with them. Fforde takes his tone from Douglas Adams and Adams-era Dr. Who, mixed with just enough literary erudition not to alienate anyone who made it though senior year English.
Sounds great -- but the book is truly dire. Fforde seems to feel that farce relieves him of all responsibilities in plotting, characterization, and even consistency. He introduces multiple pointless time travel paradoxes, gives us a villain who can stop bullets for no reason at all, and having established his rules for moving in and out of literature, eventually breaks them all. Toward the finish the book becomes so depressingly lazy, developments so random, that one is hard pressed to reach the end.
So, no suspense, no emotion, and not even many laughs. While the Eyre Affair is certainly a quick read, it becomes quickly annoying to see such a terrific premise wasted.
13 people found this helpful

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