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Loading... The Eyre Affair (2001)by Jasper Fforde  
Favourite Books (46) » 39 more Best Fantasy Novels (93) Female Protagonist (26) Metafiction (12) Top Five Books of 2017 (104) Best Comic Fantasy (14) Parallel Novels (5) Books Read in 2015 (2,378) Books tagged favorites (165) SantaThing 2014 Gifts (137) Book Hoppers (1) Parallel Worlds (8) Food in Fiction (8) Magic Realism (316) First Novels (390) Books Read in 2018 (2,517) Unread books (564) Page Turners (131) Biggest Disappointments (454)  LisCarey | Sep 19, 2018 |  Disappointing - I was expecting to like this book a lot more. There were a lot of good things here: -Britishness -Literary references (loved the names of the news station and the newspaper) -Pet dodos that make cute "plok-plok" noises -Jane Eyre -Thursday's time-traveling dad, who once says "Great Scott!" ala Back to the Future -Some cinematic moments But there was just...too much. Of everything. This book tried to be a serious mystery, as well as a rollicking comedy with lots of fantasy and sci-fi. Maybe the right combination of these things might have worked. But there were also vampires and werewolves, and shapeshifters, and people who could jump into books at will, and the Crimean War, and a ruthless corporation. And way too many characters. It was just too random. aratiel | Sep 5, 2018 | Fabulously funny with more plot twists than you can possibly imagine. Thursday Next, a member of the LiteraTec branch of Special Operations for England specializes in tracking down criminals who make fake copies of famous books and sell them at exorbitant prices. She gets transferred when one of her former teachers pulls a big one and steals an original manuscript of a Dickens' work. As this is, of course, science fiction, it is possible to walk in and out of books if you have a) the talent or b) a machine invented by Thursday's uncle. The original manuscript for Jane Eyre is also nabbed by this evil being and the book begins to change. It is up to Thursday to stop the mutation at all costs. After reading Fforde's book, I read Jane Eyre, then went back and read The Eyre Affair again. While it did help to have read Jane Eyre, it was not absolutely necessary. The book lost half a star for me because Fforde inserted a plot point aligned with Jane Eyre that seemed a bit clumsy. However, I am definitely going to read more of this series. (  ) krazy4katz | Aug 8, 2018 | a truly unique and clever series (  ) melanieklo | Jul 25, 2018 | Campy, humorous, so far-fetched that there is no necessity to try to find logic or believability anywhere in it. Just for fun, for sure. I can't imagine reading a second volume of this stuff, but once was fine. I think you would have to know and love Jane Eyre to appreciate this, but then I would not be surprised if die-hard Eyre fans might be insulted by seeing their favorite used in such a light manner. I really fell right in the middle...didn't love it, didn't hate it...so I gave it a middle of the road rating. (  ) phantomswife | Jul 6, 2018 |
 Fforde wears the marks of his literary forebears proudly on his sleeve, from Lewis Carroll and Wodehouse to Douglas Adams and Monty Python, in both inventiveness and sense of fun.  Fforde delivers almost every sentence with a sly wink, and he's got an easy way with wordplay, trivia and inside jokes. ''The Eyre Affair'' can be too clever by half, and fiction like this is certainly an acquired taste, but Fforde's verve is rarely less than infectious. A good editor might have trimmed away some of the annoying padding of this novel and helped the author to assimilate his heavy borrowings from other artists, but no matter: by the end of the novel, Mr. Fforde has, however belatedly, found his own exuberant voice. THE EYRE AFFAIR is mostly a collection of jokes, conceits and puzzles. It's smart, frisky and sheer catnip for former English majors....And some of the jokes are clever indeed. Dark, funny, complex, and inventive, THE EYRE AFFAIR is a breath of fresh air and easily one of the strongest debuts in years. Is contained inThe Thursday Next Chronicles I-IV by Jasper Fforde The Thursday Next Chronicles I-V by Jasper Fforde Was inspired byHas as a student's study guide
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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
(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 12 Mar 2015 18:08:12 -0400)
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 ...… (more)
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