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The Eyre Affair
 
 

The Eyre Affair (Hardcover)

by Jasper Fforde (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (97 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd (19 Jul 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0340820470
  • ISBN-13: 978-0340820476
  • Product Dimensions: 24.1 x 16.1 x 4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (97 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 937,152 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

Pirouetting on the boundaries between sci-fi, the crime thriller and intertextual whimsy, Jasper Fforde's outrageous The Eyre Affairputs you on the wrong footing even on its dedication page, which proudly announces that the book conforms to Crimean War economy standard.

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 --This text refers to the Paperback edition.



Review

'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 '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, on THE EYRE AFFAIR 'Ingenious - I'll watch Jasper Fforde nervously' 'Surely a cult in the making' 'If you want a change from these stories of loves fractured and rebuilt there is not shortage of gloriously eccentric alternatives. Jasper Fforde's much-hyped debut next month THE EYRE AFFAIR in which a literary detective has to stop an arch-criminal kidnapping characters from works of fiction and holding them to ransom as well as engineering a halt to the ongoing Crimean War. Enough? I haven't even mentioned the pet dodo and the aunt trapped in Wordsworth poem.' '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.' -- Wall Street Journal 'A decidedly quirky and strangely thought-provoking debut novel' 'The eccentric epic - A read that'll leave you breathless' 'The reader is catapulted in and out of truth and imagination on a hectic, humorous and neatly constructed chase that finishes by tying up every loose end in the most satisfying, novelistic way' '[She's] part Bridget Jones, part Nancy Drew and part Dirty Harry' -- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times, on Thursday Next 'Jasper Fforde's FASCINATING FIRST NOVEL reads like a Jules Verne story told by Lewis Carroll...Forget all the rules of time, space, and reality; just sit back and enjoy the adventure as Thursday, with the help of Jane Eyre's Mr Rochester, fights a desperate battle in which Jane herself is in jeopardy.' 'Dark, funny, complex and inventive, The Eyre Affair is a breath of fresh air, and is easily one of the strongest debuts in years.'

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Customer Reviews

97 Reviews
5 star:
 (59)
4 star:
 (25)
3 star:
 (5)
2 star:
 (4)
1 star:
 (4)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.4 out of 5 stars (97 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous book - worth missing sleep to read, 31 Jul 2001
By A Customer
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.

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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Fun, 28 Sep 2006
By SJ SMART "Smartie" (London) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This book is great!!!!!!!!

I was given this book as a gift one Christmas by a good friend but sadly I left it on a bookshelf for a few months and then took it on a long plane journey, and what a great choice it was!!! I was totally hooked, be prepared for a gripping well written original and funny story in which anything can happen - people jump in and out of books, time travel, vampires, airships, riots about art and literature,, the British Crimean peninsula, people knocking on doors to convert you to theories about Shakespeare and on it goes. You are constantly surprised. I bought the rest of the series as soon as I got back and have not been disappointed, you wont be either. Buy this book and spread the word.
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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars No Eyre-Head Detective Here, 5 Aug 2006
By Gail Williams "Pezzini" (Swansea, Wales) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
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.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Bizarre but entertaining
A very bizarre book, but extremely entertaining. Sort of an alternate history kinda thing with a literary obsession, time travel and genetically engineered dodos. Read more
Published 2 days ago by Sulkyblue

4.0 out of 5 stars The Chuzzlewit Caper?
For the first half of the novel, one might have asked if it had the wrong name, but by the time the book ends, one can probably agree that "The Eyre Affair" is at least as good a... Read more
Published 10 days ago by Dave_42

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic!!! Would highly recommend
What a great read. The front cover is what attracted me to this series, I thought I read something different from my usual Horror and chick lit and gave this a go. Read more
Published 1 month ago by V. Nash

5.0 out of 5 stars One of My Favourite Books!
England, 1985. Thursday Next, our heroine, lives in a world similar to ours, it's more or less a parallel reality where history seems to have shifted a bit, though some things do... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Ana Isabel Oliveira

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Read. Perfect beginning to a Wonderful series.
Those who slate this book arent being fair to the skill and literary genuis gone in to creating it. After reading the Eyre affair i went on to read the whole series and the... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Laura Collie

5.0 out of 5 stars Been waiting for this book all my life!!
If, like me, you like books that celebrate books, words, language, other worlds - this is for you.

Admittely, Jasper Fforde's book isn't easy to get into at first;... Read more
Published 8 months ago by BookJumper

1.0 out of 5 stars Puerile Trash
Don't waste your time reading this puerile trash. It is dull in the extreme and unimaginative. Given the suspension of the usual contraints of time the story could have been so... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Charlotte Irwin

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde is nothing short of a work of pure Literary genius. This obviously means that I loved it! Read more
Published 9 months ago by D. Cotton

4.0 out of 5 stars Promising start to the series
An enjoyable read. The somewhat surreal alternative Britain in which the novel is set would appeal to fans of Terry Pratchett and Robert Rankin. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Colin Forbes

4.0 out of 5 stars WOW! What a book!
I have just finished reading 'The Eyre Affair' by Jasper Fforde and I want to recommend it to everyone! Read more
Published 11 months ago by L. Perkins

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