The Eyre Affair

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Mystery / Fforde, Jasper	4-week checkout	Due 05-20-2024

Great Britain circa 1985: time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodas are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. Based on an imaginary world where time and reality bend in the most convincing and original way since The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Eyre Affair is a delightful rabbit hole of a read: once you fall in you may never come back. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in Wordsworth poems, militant Baconians roam freely spreading the gospel that Bacon, not Shakespeare, penned those immortal works. And forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. This is all business as usual for brainy, bookish (and heat-packing) Thursday Next, a renowned Special Operative in literary detection -- that is, until someone begins murdering characters from works of literature. When this madman plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Bronte's novel Thursday faces the challenge of her career. Aided and abetted by characters that include her time-traveling father, an executive of the all-powerful Goliath Corporation, and Edward Rochester himself, Thursday must track down the world's Third Most Wanted criminal and enter the novel herself to avert a heinous act of literary homicide. A brilliantly outlandish and absorbing caper destined to become a classic adventure tale, The Eyre Affair is an irresistible thriller and the introduction to the imagination of a most distinctive writer. In Jasper Fforde's singular fictional universe no literary character is safe from crime. And for Special Operative Thursday Next this is only the beginning ...

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Summary / Annotation
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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Whimsy for Word Lovers submitted by osbornk on July 13, 2011, 11:29am This is the first book in the Thursday Next series: The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, First Among Sequels and One of Our Thursdays Is Missing. The action occurs in a time and place ever so slightly off kilter from our own. Time travel and, most importantly, book travel drive this playful story. Lots of buried treasure for fans of wordplay and literature. I listened to the entire series on audio and highly recommend that medium for the English-accented narration.

The Eyre Affair submitted by halofriendly on July 23, 2011, 9:34pm The space I would need to write about how much I love Jasper Fforde's books exceeds what I have available here. Suffice it to say, everyone should pick this series up and read it. It's intelligent, it makes great & nerdy references to everything pop culture and literary, and the storyline is quite original.

Liked it... submitted by marielle on July 8, 2012, 9:49am I liked this book, but not enough to pick up the remaining books in the series. It was entertaining but not thrilling like you expect a mystery to be.

Eyre Affair submitted by Jen Chapin-Smith on August 27, 2013, 12:39pm "The Eyre Affair" is the first and best known of Jasper Fforde's many novels and the start of the "Thursday Next" series. I highly recommend them all as a fun read even if Fforde is inconsistent with the rules of how magic works in this fictional universe.

Thursday Next is a Crimean War veteran (the war is still going on between England and Russia) and a literary detective who investigates crimes related to fiction novels. As a child she discovered she could fall into a book and then interact with the characters in their own landscape. This caused her to change a small plot device in "Jane Eyre," but critics of her world think it was for the best.

The police in the "real" world have hired Thursday to catch a serial killer who used to be her professor and tracks him to the text of "Jane Eyre," which she enters again, causing the novel's plot to change.

The series is set in an alternate version of Swindon, England. In it, scientists have cloned and brought back to everyday life neanderthals, dodo birds, wooly mammoths and other creatures. People travel in dirigibles, rather than airplanes. Wales is a separate nation from England and cheese has become a black market commodity. The entire universe and series is highly entertaining.

i didn't quite get it... submitted by camelsamba on June 24, 2014, 12:53pm Perhaps I'm not the intended audience. I don't know enough Brit Lit to fully appreciate that aspect, and I didn't really understand the world (all the levels of SpecOps, what the Litera Tecs really do, etc.). I was interested enough to finish it, but it felt like I was reading out of obligation more than interest.

And the Kindle formatting seemed wonky - at times I got the impression that the print book probably had some kind of font/fostering change because otherwise the changes were too jarring.

Timely: "It didn't fit my idea of what a just war should be. Pushing Nazis out of Europe had been just. The fight over the Crimean Peninsula was nothing but xenophobic pride and misguided patriotism." (P 79)

Enjoyable submitted by charlottedebaltzo on June 20, 2017, 8:12pm This book was a fun read, especially if you're into literature. There were so many references to famous authors and books, and even though I didn't recognize half of them, I still enjoyed reading it.

Fun! submitted by betsywil on June 18, 2018, 9:14pm The Eyre Affair is the first book in the thoroughly enjoyable Thursday Next series, which involves alternate history, time travel (controlled and not) and travel into and between books.
Fun characters, twisty plots, and lots of literary references.

and I first discovered this book thanks to an early badge in the AADL Summer Reading Game.
Thank you, AADL. :)

A book for readers submitted by wellscai on August 12, 2018, 12:21pm I greatly enjoyed this book. Set in an alternative universe where literature is of paramount importance, Thursday Next investigates matters related to literary crime. I got most of the literary references, and would probably have enjoyed it even more if I was more widely read. If you majored in English literature and/or know your British canon, this book would be great for you.

Fun, but not the target audience submitted by KathyD on June 16, 2020, 7:07pm I enjoyed this book, but am not familar enough with all the other books referenced by it to love it as much as others. I loaned it to my english teacher neighbor during quarantine,

I tried to like it, I really did submitted by onpaper24 on July 18, 2020, 9:43pm But I found while sometimes clever, I was bored.

A fun read submitted by Princess Cimorene on July 21, 2020, 12:22am This is a really original book. Great concept, lots of action, and fun literary allusions.

Loved it! submitted by delaflynn on August 22, 2021, 12:33am The Thursday Next series is fantastic. If you are into satire and irony, this book is for you.

a book for readers submitted by AnnieKelly on August 1, 2022, 10:56am The whole series is fantastic and this sets the scene. Perfect for big readers who will get the snarky literary references. I could definitely see how it would be off putting to those who didn't get them, but I found it delightful.

A quirky fun jaunt submitted by bhaak on August 20, 2022, 8:32pm This book is inventive, witty, and has many references to classical literature. Thursday is a strong female lead who discovers a talent for entering the written word.