The Eyre Affair

Today we rejoice with The Eyre Affair, a wonderful novel by Jasper Fforde, and the first of the Thursday Next series.

I must admit: nobody told me about this book. Nobody. Not one single person. Not my friends who read more than I do. Nor my friends who enjoy the same type of books I do. Not even my friends who went to graduate school and studied English and literature. Not. A Soul.

You can’t see me right now, but I’m giving major evil eye to everyone I just mentioned.

Everyone should go right now to their local bookstore (or the internet if you’re one of those people who always has a Kindle or a Nook close at hand – which is me). Buy this book. Give it a chapter or two or three – it does take time to put yourself in this world and understand the social parameters.

Title: The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next Series #1), Author: Jasper Fforde

Let’s dive in. It is 1980’s London: there is a seemingly endless war with Russia over some land, literature is taken VERY seriously, and there are a host of issues wrong with both of those things. Thursday Next works for a SpecOp group of police, specifically in their literary division. Her career is dull – identifying forgeries mostly, since such high value is placed on originals. But things are about to become very exciting: a madman is stealing original manuscripts and removing characters from the stories. Thursday is brought in by a secretive group within SpecOp to help identify the madman (who does not show up on camera) because she has met him before. When her small team is killed, she must race to stop him before he can do irreparable harm to both the war and to literature.

Stopping the madman means she will have to return home (which she has avoided for years), finally address her feelings for her brother (who died in the war), and accept or derail her ex-lover’s planned marriage to a bimbo. And she really ought to try not to get killed in the process, what with the weapons and vampires and time travel and such.

The book is great. What genre? Oh, I don’t know. You could probably shelve it in any number of genres. There is romance, action, steampunk, fantasy, humor . . . take your pick.

But, would you like to know the best part? We get to spend time with all the lovely people in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre! Want to see Edward Rochester outside the constraints of the book? Want to see more and understand Jane Eyre? Thursday interacts with all of them – consequently changing the book as written to match the book as we know it today!! [Full disclosure: I love Jane Eyre. Favorite book of all time. I read it every year and still have the same book I got when I was 10 years old. That book can do no wrong.]

I enjoyed this book tremendously. The world was completely different to anything I’ve read before. The idea of working for police who focused on literature?? Why wasn’t that an option on my high school career chart? The characters were believable for their world and very entertaining. It is such a mish-mash of genres that I think most people would enjoy this if they gave it chance.

My only negatives are that it took me too many years (and dumb luck) to find it, and I do not currently own the rest of the series.

Also, I do wish I had an uncle who could create portals for me to visit books; that would be amazing.

Overall: 9/10.

 

Discussion

  1. NFT
  2. Xxx
  3. xxx
  4. sex
  5. Gia
  6. Coy
  7. Rob
  8. sex
  9. Tom
  10. car
  11. Ray
  12. Gay
  13. Bev
  14. May
  15. Ona
  16. Uwe
  17. go
  18. 1

Leave a Reply