The Eyre Affair

Locations
Call Number: BOCD Mystery
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	BOCD Mystery	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Compact discs.
Read by Susan Duerden.
There is another 1985, somewhere in the could-have-been, where dodos are regenerated in home-cloning kits and everyone is disappointed by the ending of Jane Eyre. But in this world there are policemen who can travel across time, a Welsh republic - and a woman called Thursday Next.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

The Eyre Affair submitted by Jen Chapin-Smith on August 27, 2013, 12:41pm "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.

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.

Our protagonist, 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 Eyre Affair" has a very long and twisting plot, but it is well worth reading. You will certainly need to read it in order to become acquainted with characters and plot devises that will show up throughout the series.