The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

 

Title: The Eyre Affair
Author: Jasper Fforde
Paperback: 374 pages
Pub Date: July 19, 2001
Publisher: Penguin Books
Rating: ++++

Summary from pub:

Welcome to a surreal version of Great Britain, circa 1985, where time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem, militant Baconians heckle performances of Hamlet, and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection, until someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature. When Jane Eyre is plucked from the pages of Brontë’s novel, Thursday must track down the villain and enter the novel herself to avert a heinous act of literary homicide

Review:

My husband has been recommending this series to me since we met. Sometimes it takes me a while to read things. I am really glad I waited though, because if I read this before I read Jane Eyre I would have not liked or appreciated it as much. You don’t have to read it, but if you have you will understand it more.

This book is so clever. I love the idea of a world where literature is taken more seriously than everything else. There are monuments to manuscripts. People make trips around literary places, and not just us book nerds. Oh, and there is time travel too. It is super awesome.

This isn’t the greatest book ever, but it is a whole lot of fun to read! Fforde is very clever and has a wonderful imagination. It shows on every page.

I have added the rest of the books in this series to my to-read list. After liking this one so much, I won’t let it be another seven years until I read the next one!