The eyre affair

© 2001 Dru Pagliassotti
All rights reserved.

The Eyre Affair
by Jasper Fforde
Viking
ISBN: 0-670-03064-3

The Eyre Affair is a wonderfully absurd fantasy about time travel and a 1985 alternate Earth that is seriously and emotionally involved with its literary classics.

When criminal mastermind (and former English lecturer) Acheron Hades steals the original Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit manuscript, Special Ops-27 Literary Detective Thursday Next is drawn into the investigation. When a minor character from the manuscript is found dead – murdered – the literary world is aghast. And when Jane Eyre is kidnapped from Charlotte Brontë's novel, it's up to Thursday to figure out how and why. Calling on the help of Brontë's brooding character Edward Rochester, she embarks on a journey through the UK and Brontë's novel to rescue Jane and foil Acheron's malevolant plot.

Simultaneously erudite and quirky, highbrow and playful, The Eyre Affair proposes a fascinating alternate Earth in which a renegade ChronoGuard (Thursday's father) is trying to fix history, genetically reconstructed dodos are the favorite English pet, Baconians and Marlovians go door-to-door to challenge Shakespeare's authorship, the Crimean War is in its 131st year, and performances of Shakespeare's Richard III have taken the place of The Rocky Horror Picture Show for irreverent audience participation. By the time the novel is finished, the reader can't help but experience a renewed interest in the classics and feel that, somewhere along the way, the real world's entertainment priorities have gone terribly awry.

The Eyre Affair invites comparison to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but frankly, I enjoyed The Eyre Affair more. It's a loving, offbeat homage to European literary history, but it's still accessible to readers who haven't read Jane Eyre or cracked a Shakespeare play since high school. The plot deftly addresses literary mysteries and questions, making the dessicated field of classic English literature come alive with puzzles and controversies, yet remaining lighthearted and entertaining throughout.

Heroine Thursday Next is a strong, resourceful character who tackles the most bizarre situations with panache and good humor. Readers can learn more about her at the Thursday Next website, which includes not only character information but book-related pop-up ads, chat, a link to the SpecOps website, the Goliath Corp. website, comments from author Jasper Fforde, and much more.

The bottom line is that I highly recommend The Eyre Affair, and I'm looking forward to reading its upcoming sequel, Lost in a Good Book. And I really, really would like to go to one of those audience-interactive Richard III performances. Where'd I put my sunglasses...?

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