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Amazon.co.uk Review
Fforde's heroine, Thursday Next, lives in a world where time and reality are endlessly mutable--someone has ensured that the Crimean War never ended for example--a world policed by men like her disgraced father, whose name has been edited out of existence. She herself polices text--against men like the Moriarty-like Acheron Styx, whose current scam is to hold the minor characters of Dickens' novels to ransom, entering the manuscript and abducting them for execution and extinction one by one. When that caper goes sour, Styx moves on to the nation's most beloved novel--an oddly truncated version of Jane Eyre--and kidnaps its heroine. The phlegmatic and resourceful Thursday pursues Acheron across the border into a Leninist Wales and further to Mr Rochester's Thornfield Hall, where both books find their climax on the roof amid flames.
Fforde is endlessly inventive: his heroine's utter unconcern about the strangeness of the world she inhabits keeps the reader perpetually double-taking as minor certainties of history, literature and cuisine go soggy in the corner of our eye. The audacity of the premise and its working out provides sudden leaps of understanding, many of them accompanied by wild fits of the giggles. This is a peculiarly promising first novel. --Roz Kaveney
Review
'It is always a privilege to watch the birth of a cult, and Hodder has just cut the umbilical cord. 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 )
'Ingenious - I'll watch Jasper Fforde nervously' (Terry Pratchett )
'Surely a cult in the making' (Marie Clare )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fabulous book - worth missing sleep to read,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next) (Paperback)
I loved this book. I lost sleep in order to read it (probably my ultimate accolade for a book). From the first page it all hangs together, despite the fact the alternate 1985 it's set in is so different that you can't take anything for granted. You just have to run with the blank bits in the world view until they get filled in (they do, eventually). The idea of a world where literature is popular culture just appealed to me, finally a book that rewards you for having read some of the classics (I think you'd still enjoy it without that though). And a heroine who never once worries about her weight. Its got it all, plot, characters (I'm still not sure how someone with as few appearances an Landon can come across so strongly as a character), jokes (possibly you need a slightly odd sense of humour) and two happy endings. If you need down to earth reality where you know exactly where you stand, this probably isn't the book for you. If you're happy to let reality look after itself for a couple of hours, you should like it.
32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
No Eyre-Head Detective Here,
By
This review is from: The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next) (Paperback)
At last, a readable, enjoyable, female detective!
It always annoys me that there aren't enough well written women detectives in fiction, so when I saw this one on offer, I figured, what the Hell, I've read worse books in my time, might as well give this a go. And boy and I glad I did! Thursday Next is one of the most alive characters I've read in a long time. This representation of Rochester - as unexpected as it was - had me going back to a version of `Jane Eyre' that I brought years ago. So I checked the references in `The Eyre Affair' with `Jane Eyre' and straight away after read `Jane Eyre' for the fist time in my life - two good books for the price of one. The story twists and turns, but never fails to amuse, the covert, and occasionally obvious, cross-references brought out some real laughs. I loved the idea of the Socialist Republic of Wales, being a conservative in Swansea this really appealed, and no, it doesn't always rain here. So give it a try, pick up `The Eyre Affair', read and enjoy.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fantastic trip through fiction,
By R Pluthero (Middlesex United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Eyre Affair (Paperback)
I thoroughly enjoyed this book with it's crazy mix of fiction, good guys chasing bad guys and quirky humour.Thursday Next is a Literatec (or Literary detective) in a world where changes can be made to books if you can just get hold of the original manuscript and it is her job to stop to stop arch villain Acheron Hades from destroying Jane Eyre after he kidnaps Jane from the manuscript and alters all the copies. If you enjoy classic fiction (especially Jane Eyre); Douglas Adams and Alice in Wonderland then you will probably enjoy this.
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