Staff Pick

The Eyre Affair: A Thursday Next Novel

Jasper Fforde

$18.00

Publication Date: February 25th, 2003

Publisher:

Penguin Books

ISBN:

9780142001806

Pages:

400

Charter Books

On hand, as of Apr 18 1:07am

(Mystery & Suspense)

On Our Shelves Now

Staff Reviews

I would not have thought it possible to eloquently combine alternate history, satire, sci-fi, literary appreciation (and more!) all into one book if I hadn't read this one. Set in an alternate 1980s UK that's still in the Crimean War and where Shakespearian authorship is highly controversail, literary detective Thursday Next must stop a literary terrorist from changing Jane Eyre. With time travel, book travel, and characters named Pickwick, Jack Schitt, and Acheron Hades, this book is very nerdy and so, so cool!

— Kat

Description

Meet Thursday Next, literary detective without equal, fear or boyfriend

Jasper Fforde’s beloved New York Times bestselling novel introduces literary detective Thursday Next and her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England—from the author of The Constant Rabbit

Fans of Douglas Adams and P. G. Wodehouse will love visiting Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, when time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously: it’s a bibliophile’s dream. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Brontë's novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career. Fforde's ingenious fantasy—enhanced by a Web site that re-creates the world of the novel—unites intrigue with English literature in a delightfully witty mix.

About the Author

From the author of THE CHRONICLES OF KAZAM series, including The Last Dragonslayer

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 series of Thursday Next series novels, which includes Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, First Among Sequels, One of Our Thursdays is Missing, and the upcoming The Woman Who Died A Lot. He is also the author of The Big Over Easy and The Fourth Bear of the Nursery Crime series, and Shades of Grey. More recently Fforde's work includes The Last Dragonslayer, The Chronicles of Kazam series. Visit jasperfforde.com.

Praise for The Eyre Affair: A Thursday Next Novel

“Neatly delivers alternate history, Monty Pythonesque comedy skits, Grand Guignol supervillains, thwarted lovers, po-mo intertextuality, political commentary, time travel, vampires, absent-minded inventors, a hard-boiled narrator, and lots, lots more. . . . Suspend your disbelief, find a quiet corner and just surrender to the storytelling voice of the unstoppable, ever-resourceful Thursday Next.”
—The Washington Post

“Fforde’s imaginative novel will satiate readers looking for a Harry Potter-esque tale. . . . The Eyre Affair’s literary wonderland recalls Douglas Adams’s Hitchhikers series, the works of Lewis Carroll and Woody Allen’s The Kugelmass Episode.”
—USA Today

“[Thursday Next is] part Bridget Jones, part Nancy Drew, and part Dirty Harry.”
—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“Delightfully clever . . . Filled with clever wordplay, literary allusion and bibliowit, The Eyre Affair combines elements of Monty Python, Harry Potter, Stephen Hawking and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but its quirky charm is all its own.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“Jasper Fforde’s first novel, The Eyre Affair, is a spirited sendup of genre fiction—it’s part hardboiled mystery, part time-machine caper—that features a sassy, well-read ‘Special Operative in literary detection’ named Thursday Next, who will put you more in mind of Bridget Jones than Miss Marple. Fforde delivers almost every sentence with a sly wink, and he’s got an easy way with wordplay, trivia, and inside jokes. . . . Fforde’s verve is rarely less than infectious.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Jasper Fforde’s genre-busting, whoppingly imaginative first novel, The Eyre Affair, is packed with literary allusions . . . .Thanks to Fforde’s terrific imagination, this definitely will not be the winter of our discontent.”
—The Miami Herald

“For sheer inventiveness his book is hard to beat. The Eyre Affair is an exuberant mélange of crime, comedy and alternative history.”
—Houston Chronicle

“The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde could hardly be more delightful. . . . It takes a bold adventurer to play fast and loose with literature, and that’s what we have in Thursday Next and Fforde.”
—Newsday

“[Fforde] delivers multiple plot twists, rampant literary references and streams of wild metafictional invention in a novel that places literature at the center of the pop-cultural universe. . . . It all adds up to a brainy, cheerfully twisted adventure.”
—Time Out New York

“A blend of suspense and silliness, two parts fantasy (think Alice in Wonderland meet Superman), two parts absurdity (anything by Carl Hiaasen) and one part mystery (Agatha Christie meets Sue Grafton).”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Her name is Next. Thursday Next. And her story is as amusing and intriguing as the summary of her story told within the pages of The Eyre Affair. Next is a literary detective in a world so enamored with the written world that Shakespeare’s Richard III is staged nightly as if it were The Rocky Horror Picture Show . . . . The novel’s writing flows and the imaginative twists and turns in Next’s world are handled smoothly.”
—Sun-Sentinel

'Always ridiculous, often hilarious ... blink and you miss a vital narrative leap. There are shades of Douglas Adams, Lewis Carroll, 'Clockwork Orange' and '1984'. And that's just for starters' - Time Out London

"What Fforde is pulling is a variation on the classic Monty Python gambit: the incongruous juxtaposition og low comedy and high erudition - this scam has not been pulled off with such off-hand finesse and manic verve since the Pythons shut up shop. 'The Eyre Affair' is a silly book for smart people: postmodernism played as raw, howling farce"― Independent (London)