The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde

Thursday Next has got a lot on her plate at the moment. For starters she's one of very few people in the world who would recognise Acheron Hades, the third most evil man in the world, and despite being a lowly LiteraTec, she's a tough woman, not afraid to get her hands dirty. Which is exactly what she's going to have to do if Hades doesn't stop kidnapping characters from fiction for ransom. In the meantime, if she can cope with time-stopping visits from her father, moving back to Swindon, the close attentions of the ice-cold Jack Schitt from the shadowy Goliath Corp and if she can convince the man she loves to marry her (having first convinced herself that she can marry ...  Read the complete review

This is Jasper Fforde's first novel, published in 2001, and it is a groundbreaking, superb book which is impossible to pin to any one genre. Set in a parallel 1985 it follows a middle aged woman named Thursday Next (a name that is taken from Shakesperes Romeo and Juliet) who is a former police officer and veteran of the Crimean war which rather than finishing in 1856 is still going strong after over a century. Thursday is now working as a government official literary detective in a world where books are big business (instead of jehovas witnesses they have Baconites who go door to door trying to convince people that Francis Bacon wrote Shakesperes plays). ...  Read the complete review

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde ISBN-10: 034073356X ISBN-13: 978-0340733561 Paperback publication 2001 Thursday Next is a Literary Detective and a good one at that. In a world where literary crime is a major offence and time can be stopped, slowed down or changed by "revisionists" most things can happen. With the Crimean War ongoing and feral Dodo's in the parks, this is a very different world. Our heroine, Thursday, works in London rooting out fake Shakespeare texts and trying and failing to find a boyfriend who can live up to someone in her past. The novel begins with the theft of the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewhit with ...  Read the complete review

Dogs go 'woof', cows go 'moo' and dodos go... 'plock'! This story is set in Britain in 1985 but there are differences - the Crimean War is still going on, Wales is a socialist republic and cloned dodos are kept as pets (they say 'plock' and are really cute). Most importantly books are revered. They are treated like great works of art or celebrities are in our world. Our heroine is Thursday Next, a LiteraTec who investigates manuscript thefts. In this story Jane Eyre has been kidnapped and Thursday has to get her back to Mr Rochester. There are a lot of puns and literary references. If you enjoy clever word play this is the book for you. It is easy ...  Read the complete review

I’m always one to try out new authors, I love rooting through the books at Waterstones and reading the backs of all these new unknown authors – to me it’s the highlight of shopping with my girlfriend. Rarely have I picked up a book and instantly known that it was going to be a cracker, just from the description on the back. Nine times out of ten something will put me off, and even on that one occasion where I like the description I won’t think anything more of it. On reading the first few lines of this I was hooked. The Eyre Affair is a story set in an alternate world, a world where time travel is an everyday occurrence, a world where ...  Read the complete review