The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next #1)

by Jasper Fforde

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3.89 · rating details · 17,544 ratings · 2,708 reviews

Penzler Pick, January 2002: When I first heard the premise of this unique mystery, I doubted that a first-time author could pull off a complicated caper involving so many assumptions, not the least of which is a complete suspension of disbelief. Jasper Fforde is not only up to the task, he exceeds all expectations.

Imagine this. Great Britain in 1985 is close to

...more

Paperback, 384 pages

Published February 25th 2003 by Penguin (Non-Classics) (first published 2001)

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Sep 25, 2007

piraterie rated it

Shelves: read2007

I had the same feeling after reading this as I had after reading The Looking Glass Wars. Fabulous idea, terrible execution. I was going to give it one more star than I gave that because it's not quite as badly written. And I liked the idea of door-to-door Baconians and Rocky Horrorized Richard III. But I changed my mind because the more I think about it, the more I didn't like it.

It was so smug and cutesy and in need of better editing. And it would have been better served by not ...more

like 29 likes 6 comments

Oct 22, 2007

Lisa Vegan rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: those who enjoy the following: humor, mysteries, sci-fi, fantasy, literature & language

Shelves: bookclubs-gr-groups, books-about-books, favorite-time-travel-books, fiction, mystery, novels, reviewed, speculative-fiction, top-100

This is a thoroughly delightful and brilliant book. I chuckled and chortled all the way through this book; it’s hilarious. There are many interesting characters and I am eager to read the rest of this series. I’m not sure that the successive books will also get 5 stars from me: the clever premise might get a tad old; I’ll have to see. This unusual story is a bit difficult to define. It fits multiple genres: sci-fi, mystery, humor, fantasy, and fiction. And the author manages to create an e ...more

like 18 likes 14 comments

Oct 19, 2007

Jason Pettus rated it

(The much longer full review can be found at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of the literary genre known as "speculative" fiction; for those not familiar with it, the genre primarily concerns itself with historical questions of "what if?" What if the South had won the Civil War, for example, or the Nazis World War II? What if computers, robots and nuclear weapons had been invented in the 1840s ...more (The much longer full review can be found at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of the literary genre known as "speculative" fiction; for those not familiar with it, the genre primarily concerns itself with historical questions of "what if?" What if the South had won the Civil War, for example, or the Nazis World War II? What if computers, robots and nuclear weapons had been invented in the 1840s instead of the 1940s? It is a great genre for those intrigued by the issues raised in science-fiction, but who do not care for the more hard-edged fetishes of that particular genre (the spaceships, the lasers, the aliens); because ultimately speculative fiction relies a lot more on real history and sociology for its ultimate entertainment value than most traditional sci-fi, making it a good place to regularly find big crossover hits.

One such hit, for example, has turned out to be the delightful 2002 speculative novel The Eyre Affair, by the Douglas-Adamsesque Jasper Fforde; it has in fact inspired an entire series of popular novels since then set in the same speculative universe, collectively known as the "Thursday Next" series because of its main protagonist. The latest, First Among Sequels, just came out this summer; I've heard a lot of great things about all the books in the series, so thought I'd start at the beginning and finally experience them for myself. And man, what a speculative world this turns out to be -- it is an entire alternate Earth that Fforde creates, in fact, one much like ours in many ways but with there also being telling differences. Like...

--In Fforde's world, Russia never had a Soviet revolution, and is still run by the Tsarist royal family;

--As a result, England and Russia have been fighting the Crimean War for 131 years now, the entire thing turning into a Vietnam-like unwinnable mess that neither side can politically walk away from anymore;

--As a result of that, England in Fforde's world never reaches Empire status, with among the results being a fiercely independent and antagonistic Republic of Wales, as well as a virtual police state in England itself, put in place by an all-consuming private corporation called Goliath;

--It is in some respects a book nerd's dream world, a world where obscure Victorian authors are considered rock stars, and the argument over whether Shakespeare really existed or not one that spills over into street gangs and organized religions;

--And it is also a world where several topics we consider "supernatural" are to them very real and even blase -- a world that has perfected cloning, a world where time travel is an accepted reality (if not a highly controlled activity), with a series of secret government divisions in charge of regulating and policing the various industries involved.

We as the readers, then... (less)

like 18 likes 1 comment

Mar 01, 2008

Danielle rated it

Shelves: did-not-finish

I've been storing up some venom for this review, so be prepared.
First of all, I want to unleash my fury on whoever in the Rory Gilmore Book Club suggested this book as February's pick. To go from such a brilliant read as Jane Eyre to this was frustrating to say the least. It highlighted all the amateurish contrivances of Fforde's writing. I rolled my eyes so many times in the first four chapters, that I nearly gave myself a headache. And no, I'm sure it doesn't get better after that, that ...more I've been storing up some venom for this review, so be prepared.
First of all, I want to unleash my fury on whoever in the Rory Gilmore Book Club suggested this book as February's pick. To go from such a brilliant read as Jane Eyre to this was frustrating to say the least. It highlighted all the amateurish contrivances of Fforde's writing. I rolled my eyes so many times in the first four chapters, that I nearly gave myself a headache. And no, I'm sure it doesn't get better after that, that's just where I officially banished the book from my sight.
Here are my major problems with the part I read.
1. Okay, you're enterting this alternate reality world where many things are similar but different from what we know. As Fforde might assume that not all of his readers would be British, or familiar with UK current events/history, perhaps he could have given us a little more to go on, so that the reader could appreciate the weirdness of this other world, without going, "Umm...from the way that's said, I'm assuming that's not how it happened in real life."
2. Thursday Next. Seriously? Thursday Next. That just screams: "I'm writing a strong yet lovably flawed female gumshoe destined to drag you through book after book of literary-themed exploits." Her character was so stereotypical I could have written it with my eyes closed.
3. The time-travelling father.
4. If a book is written in first-person, and you really, REALLY want us to know what the character looks like, it is textbook cliche to have her pull out a mirror and describe what she sees. Puh-lease.
5. Finally, the clincher at the end of chapter four (I think. I wasn't paying all THAT much attention), but the straw that made me put away the book for good is that Fforde CLEVERLY (I felt like the whole of the book was trying just a little too hard to be clever) had Thursday narrate what had happened in her confrontation with her nemesis by putting her in an interrogation setting, where she has to tell the police investigators (and us, conveniently) what happened prior to her month-long coma. Okay, that in and of itself is not so bad, what kills me is when the only difference between what she says into the tape recorder and what she says in her narration of any other part of the book is the double quotation marks. Seriously, no one answers an investigator's question of, "So what happened next," by saying, "'What do you think you're doing?' I said. 'It's time for me to make my exit,' he answered with a smile." People write books like that. They don't talk like that. It was ridiculous.
Anyway, I guess I wouldn't be so annoyed with this book, except that it's supposed to be "delightful" for bibliophiles because it assumes all this familiarity with the classics, yet anyone who had read said classics would inevitably chafe under the obvious inferiority of this freshman attempt. (less)

like 16 likes 20 comments

Feb 02, 2008

Krista rated it

(Violence alert: The body count is high, plus some grossness factor.)
It’s a spy thriller. No, wait — it’s science fiction. No, wait — it’s literary criticism. No, wait — it’s art history. No, wait — it’s historical-political commentary. No, wait — it’s romantic comedy. No, wait — it’s an epic war drama. No, wait — it’s — oh, look — Japanese tourists!

While I applaud the spirit of many of the directions this novel takes, you kind of have to wonde ...more (Violence alert: The body count is high, plus some grossness factor.)
It’s a spy thriller. No, wait — it’s science fiction. No, wait — it’s literary criticism. No, wait — it’s art history. No, wait — it’s historical-political commentary. No, wait — it’s romantic comedy. No, wait — it’s an epic war drama. No, wait — it’s — oh, look — Japanese tourists!

While I applaud the spirit of many of the directions this novel takes, you kind of have to wonder if the author could have focused just a tad bit more...

So here’s the interesting aspect of this novel: Fforde envisions an alternate reality in which wars are (literally) waged over ideas, a fantasy in which literature and art are at the center of people’s daily concerns. In one incidental moment, the main character turns on the TV in her hotel room; a news reporter is reporting on riots that broke out while Neoclassicists were protesting the 10-year anniversary of the legalization of Surrealism.

Eventually (three-quarters of the way through the novel), the main event occurs: an English professor gone bad kidnaps Jane Eyre from page 100-something of the original manuscript, erasing the text of the remaining pages from all copies of the book and causing millions of Jane Eyre fans to come out of the woodwork and hold weepy candlelight vigils.

Our heroine, LiteraTec (literary detective) Thursday Next, must restore Jane to her rightful place in the novel, keep the evil villian away from Miss Eyre, and supervise the plot from inside the book as the book "rewrites" itself. Things go awry, of course, and the original manuscript is compromised — but with felicitous consequences for Miss Eyre, Mr. Rochester, and Jane Eyre fans everywhere.

Of course, the author of a book like this must hope to capitalize on a pre-existing Jane Eyre fan base...but the danger in writing derivative literary fiction is that, while your book may be a perfectly good book in many ways, you are putting your reader in mind of really great literature, next to which your book is doomed to lose by comparison. And as the plot of Jane Eyre droned on from Thursday Next's perspective, I couldn’t help thinking, "I’d rather be reading Jane Eyre."

The final twist in the love story is, I have to admit, cute — but not cute enough for me to recommend the book, at least not to someone exactly like me. However, if a heavy dose of violence doesn’t make you queasy and you can hold on for a roller-coaster ride of genre-bending twists and turns, you might enjoy the cleverness of it. (less)

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Mar 20, 2008

Sfdreams rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: everyone, especially those with a sense of humor

Recommended to Sfdreams by: Lisa Vegan

Shelves: reviewed

I resisted reading this book for quite awhile, but thankfully, my friend Lisa (LisaVegan), kept bugging me about it! I thought that I would not appreciate it as I have never read Jane Eyre. But, Lisa is right, you do not have to know anything about Jane Eyre to understand this book.

I am thankful to Lisa, and to Goodreads, because I probably would have never stumbled upon this delightful book otherwise, as I rarely visit the SF shelves at the library.

I only found one annoy ...more

like 12 likes 4 comments

Feb 09, 2008

Shannon rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 2008, crime, fiction, magical-realism, mystery-suspense

It is 1985 and the world isn't quite as we know it. Nor is history the same. There's a lot of odd things going on, otherwordly creatures are real, some people can go back and forth in time, literature is BIG, and the Crimean war has been going on since the 1800s. Thursday Next, a veteran of this war, now works for SpecOps (Special Operations) 27- the Literatec division. She's a kind of literature detective, and when the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit vanishes, she is brought into a muc ...more It is 1985 and the world isn't quite as we know it. Nor is history the same. There's a lot of odd things going on, otherwordly creatures are real, some people can go back and forth in time, literature is BIG, and the Crimean war has been going on since the 1800s. Thursday Next, a veteran of this war, now works for SpecOps (Special Operations) 27- the Literatec division. She's a kind of literature detective, and when the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit vanishes, she is brought into a much bigger case involving her old Uni professor, Acheron Hades, now a master-mind criminal.

Hades' plan is fairly simple: using Thursday's uncle's Prose Portal invention, he can kidnap characters from manuscripts and hold them to ransom. Literature being as important as it is in this world, you can bet he can demand millions. When his plan for Chuzzlewit doesn't go quite as planned, he steals the manuscript for Jane Eyre instead.

In this story, the plot of Jane Eyre is a bit different. Namely, she marries her cousin St John and goes to India with him. Or Africa, wherever it was. Everyone agrees it's a disappointing ending, not least of all Rochester himself, whom Thursday has a few run-ins with. It seems popping in and out of books isn't so hard as you might think. I do have to wonder, though, at Thursday's run-down of the plot for her colleague's benefit, because I have to disagree on a few points: firstly, Rochester fell in love with Jane pretty much straight away, he just didn't show it; secondly, he never intended to marry Blanche Inghram, that was just a ploy to get Jane jealous and make her love him back; and maybe it's naive of me, and maybe it's the opposite, but I don't know that there's much proof that Adele was Rochester's "love-child".

Anyway. The plot might seem a little confusing, because there's so much happening at once, but it's not. It's fast-paced and funny, and also highly original. I do have to question the curious use of a first-person omniscient narrator - though in this particular world, anything goes; it's just a bit odd to have scenes related in detail of which Thursday wasn't present for. Also, and this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, when someone is retelling a situation that includes a conversation, no one says things like "I stammered in reply" and "There was a pause. Acheron smiled." Seriously, this kind of thing is very distracting because it's so utterly implausible and unrealistic.

Also, I don't know how much of literature or anything else you could learn from a book like this, which is at its heart mocking, and full of deviances. I wouldn't take anything for fact. But I loved the joke names, especially the (rather obvious) Jack Schitt - oh loads of fun there! Thursday's uncle, Mycroft Next, the inventor, is a bit like Q from the James Bond movies, but much more vague; anyway, his inventions are quite funny. The side-plot of the Crimean war adds a serious bent to the novel, and is plenty pertinent.

In short, it wasn't quite what I was expecting but I enjoyed it immensely. I loved how the ending of Jane Eyre - one of my favourite books by the way - was changed to the one that we are familiar with sort-of by accident. And I loved the idea of the characters living the life of the story, over and over again, but able to do more or less as they liked when they weren't in the scene. Rochester was wonderful :) (less)

like 11 likes 1 comment

Nov 19, 2008

Hayes rated it

· review of another edition

Recommended to Hayes by: Nell-lu

Shelves: bookring, read-in-2009

Stephanie Plum meets Voldemort:

Thursday Next, LiteraTec (with a vanishing sports car, a pet dodo, and a few bouts of time travel), investigates the theft of original manuscripts, of characters in books, of plots even, and meets the arch villain, Acheron Hades.

I almost loved this book, but it was just a little too weird. Lots of fun, good for an amusing weekend, but just a little over the top for me.

This book was sponsored by thelostbook.net, www.bookcrossing.com ...more

like 8 likes 2 comments

Apr 23, 2009

Jon rated it

Recommended to Jon by: Alternative World Book Club June 2009

Shelves: fantasy, fiction, mystery, read-in-my-40s

3.4 stars

A wonderful thing happened on the way to The Eyre Affair; I read Jane Eyre. For that alone I will be eternally grateful.

Otherwise, it was an enjoyable but forgettable mystery set in a chaotic vortex of genres spanning paranormal, science fiction, alternate history, and time travel. At one point, it even reminded me of Butcher's Dresden series.

The puns, literary references and alternate history gaffs intrigued me and sparked quick forays of resea ...more

like 11 likes 5 comments

Jan 14, 2008

Martine rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: English lit buffs, Terry Pratchett fans

Shelves: british, humour, modern-fiction, postmodern, science-fiction

Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series is an awful lot of fun for English lit geeks who cherish their classics. It is set in an alternate England where people have cloned dodos for pets, croquet is the national sport, time travelling is a regular part of life and literature enjoys the kind of position that beer, football, cricket and TV have today, meaning that the country eats, drinks and breathes literature. It would be a perfect place to live, if it weren't for the fact that (1) it is run by a ...more

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Nov 19, 2007

Elizabeth rated it

Shelves: 2003, austen-and-friends, books-about-books, drunk-book-reviews, in-by-of-england, reviewed

My brother left a copy of The Wasteland when he visited me recently. It's been years since I last read it and it has been haunting me from its perch on top of a pile of books, which were piled on top of books already shelved, on top of an overflowing bookshelf, while I was re-reading The Eyre Affair. I finally gave in (without much strain) and read it again, then I read Eliot's notes, and searched out the German translations, and thought about pulling up that Sappho reference. Then I started thi ...more

like 23 likes 38 comments

Nov 21, 2008

Christina Stind rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 2008, fiction, series

The barriers between reality and fiction are softer than we think; a bit like a frozen lake. Hundreds of people can walk across it, but then one evening a thin spot develops and someone falls through; the hole is frozen over by the following morning." (s. 206)

This is the premise of The Eyre Affair. The main protagonist, Thursday Next, is a litterary agent - she deals with all kinds of crimes having to do with literature, forgery and the like.
She gets involved in the attemp ...more

like 5 likes 1 comment

Nov 29, 2008

John rated it

My wife and I started listening to The Eyre Affair on our Thanksgiving trip and only recently finished it, but this unique novel proved quite delightful from start to finish. I'll say up front that no small portion of our enjoyment came from Elisabeth Sastre's reading. Jasper Fforde has a good narrative voice, but Sastre just plain has a good voice as the narrator of this tale. I suspect she could read the phone book with a sense of wit and charm behind the words.

I find it hard to ...more My wife and I started listening to The Eyre Affair on our Thanksgiving trip and only recently finished it, but this unique novel proved quite delightful from start to finish. I'll say up front that no small portion of our enjoyment came from Elisabeth Sastre's reading. Jasper Fforde has a good narrative voice, but Sastre just plain has a good voice as the narrator of this tale. I suspect she could read the phone book with a sense of wit and charm behind the words.

I find it hard to give an adequate description of The Eyre Affair. To say it presents an alternate reality doesn't seem to go far enough. Sure, it's England in 1985, in a world in which the Crimean War has dragged on for 130 years or so, but I would also have to add that this alternate history is laced with a sort of surreal magic. The villain of the novel has superhuman abilities, from speed and strength to a magical ability to compel others to act as he wishes, to change his appearance. Our protagonist, Thursday Next, works for special operations (spec-ops) as a literatech, concerned with literary matters (which, on the whole, are a much bigger deal in this reality, where literature has taken on roughly religious significance, with societies devoted to various authors, literary pilgrimages seemingly commonplace, and proselytizing groups trying to convert others to their belief that, say, Francis Bacon or Christopher Marlowe actually wrote Shakespeare's plays. Thursday's father is a rogue from service in a different branch of spec-ops, the Chronoguard, charged with protecting us from various sorts of disasters of time, including the deliberate sabotage of the past.

Without giving too much away, I'll say that the world Fforde draws is one in which not only is time travel possible, but people can also travel into books and characters can sometimes travel out of books, leading to an act of biblio-terrorism of sorts, in which a character is kidnapped from Charles Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit and murdered. As the title suggests, however, Jane Eyre ultimately becomes central to the plot.

On the whole, it was a wild ride, but one upon which Lauren and I were happy to embark, and we'll probably look for the next book in the series before too long. (less)

like 5 likes 1 comment

May 14, 2007

Alana rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 2008june, reviewed

6/18/08

Alright. I'm leaving the five star ranking. I've been waffling back and forth to changing it to four, but really, for the creativity alone, this book deserves notice.

The Eyre Affair is Jasper Fforde's first novel, and what a novel it is. For starters, this is a dream for the average person who calls themselves a book lover... a literary fantasy where the boundary between the world in books and the "real" world is decidedly thinner than we think. For i ...more 6/18/08

Alright. I'm leaving the five star ranking. I've been waffling back and forth to changing it to four, but really, for the creativity alone, this book deserves notice.

The Eyre Affair is Jasper Fforde's first novel, and what a novel it is. For starters, this is a dream for the average person who calls themselves a book lover... a literary fantasy where the boundary between the world in books and the "real" world is decidedly thinner than we think. For instance, in this novel, Thursday Next (our intrepid heroine) fights the forces of evil (archvillain Acheron Hades). Why is he evil? Well, with the use of a prose portal (developed by Thursday's own uncle), Acheron plans on entering the original manuscripts of beloved novels and murdering characters from within, thus removing them from all published versions of those works. That might be the gist of it, but that doesn't even touch on how interesting this world is... and so I've also pasted here whatever was printed on B&N:

The word "unique" is overused and frequently misused. Here, however, is an instance where it truly applies. But to call The Eyre Affair a unique first novel featuring a fearless fictional adventurer barely begins to tell the story. When asked to summarize his creation is a single sentence, Jasper Fforde described it as "a literary detective thriller with romantic overtones, mad-inventor uncles, aunts trapped in Wordsworth poems, global multinationals, scheming evildoers, an excursion inside the novel Jane Eyre, dodos, knight-errant-time-traveling fathers, and the answer to the eternal question: Who really wrote Shakespeare's plays?" Swindon, a traditionally tranquil English town, is the ironic setting for most of these oddball characters and peculiar goings-on; the year is 1985. Fforde spins his wildly imaginative crime caper in language every bit as ingenious as the madcap plot; his devilishly clever turns of phrase take the form of verbal puzzles, anagrams, and literary and cinematic in-jokes.



Long involved in the movie-making business, Fforde gives a starring role to Thursday Next, a captivating sleuth whose respect for literature matches that of her creator. The essence of Thursday's quest is the capture of Acheron Hades, a wily cad whose dastardly crime is murder of characters from the classics.

If that hasn't gotten you hooked, I don't know what to tell you. It's a really fun book to read. I'm going to keep re-reading the sequels now.

6/16/08

The first time I read this book, I was on a plane flying home from my freshman year at college for spring break. Aside from the fact that it was the first bit of reading I had selected for myself in quite a while (and let me tell you -- buying a hardcover book in college when it isn't for a class is a big deal), it was intelligent and creative and I remember looking up repeatedly and wondering why other other passengers on the plane weren't asking me why I was unable to contain my giddiness. "It's this wonderful book," I would have answered, showing them the cover but not relinquishing my hold.

Now I'm a little older and wiser, but while home this weekend and without a new book to read, I opted to re-read this one and I haven't felt disappointed by that decision yet. It may not be as mind-blowingly delightful as when I first discovered it, but I'm still thrilled with Fforde's incredibly original plotline. (less)

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Sep 06, 2008

Sandi rated it

Shelves: 2008, fantasy, funny-stuff

I had heard good things about the Thursday Next series and had picked up a copy of the latest installment on Border's Buy One, Get One Half Off table. After I got it, I learned that you really have to read the preceding novels to understand it. The last two books I read left me really depressed, so I decided to pick up the first of the Thursday Next books, "The Eyre Affair."

This book provided me with the literary escape I needed. It made me laugh out loud with lines li ...more

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Feb 18, 2009

Ceridwen rated it

Recommended to Ceridwen by: Dave Whitaker

Shelves: alternate-history, books-about-books, mystery, rule-britannia, sci-fi

For the first hundred pages or so, I couldn't decide whether I liked this book or not. It's the tone, not that anyone mentions that sort of thing outside the classroom. I kept thinking about some poor translator trying to render this book into Russian or Swahili or something, and what a bugger all time of it she would have. Cheeky Britishisms, silly names, referents to historical events that didn't happen, or certainly didn't happen that way.

By midway, I was having a ball. I mean, t ...more

like 9 likes 4 comments

Sep 14, 2007

David rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 5q, read-in-2007

OK. Jasper and I started off on the wrong footing, when I mistakenly started with "The Well of Lost Plots". A number of people were kind enough to point out that starting in the middle of an established series, particularly one as eccentric as the Thursday Next books, was not really giving it a fair shake.

And they were absolutely right. I bought this book in Dublin on Wednesday and had devoured it by early Friday morning. It was hilarious. A few minor detours that didn't re ...more

like 5 likes 2 comments

Jun 08, 2008

Terence rated it

Shelves: sf-fantasy

I've been noticing that many of my GR Friends are reading these delightful books.

I'm not overly familiar with 19th century novelists (of any country) -- this may irrevocably tarnish my reputation in the eyes of some, but I've never read any Austen and have avoided Dickens like Typhoid Mary since Oliver Twist so I'm sure many of the literary references go right over my head -- but Thursday Next and the alternate Earth she inhabits is a marvelous conceit and Fforde is a very good write ...more

like 7 likes 2 comments

Aug 03, 2009

Sock Puppet rated it

Recommends it for: Scott Bakula, Dirk Gently

Recommended to Sock Puppet by: Ceridwen

Shelves: stolen-from-ceridwen

Something odd has happened.

I've known Compelling ever since I moved to Midwestern City. I'd never met anybody with a name like hers before. Compelling Introduction. Whose parents would do that to a kid? She left the city for places like New York and Key West, but she again lives here now with her husband and daughter. I was at a barbecue at her house this weekend and spoke with an old friend of hers I hadn't seen since I first moved to Midwestern City, a tall, dark, mysterious ...more

like 7 likes 5 comments

Apr 28, 2008

Siria rated it

Shelves: 21st-century, british-fiction, fantasy, humour

The idea behind the Thursday Next series is really fantastic—an alternate universe where the Crimean War still rages, the People's Republic of Wales has achieved a full and socialist independence, and LiteraTecs work to stop crimes against literature—but unfortunately, the execution is lousy.

What charm the book has, which is derived mostly from its literary allusions, and a kind of surreal invention that wouldn't look out of place in a Monty Python sketch, is unfortunately undermin ...more

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Apr 27, 2008

Dave rated it

Shelves: crimedetnoir, fant-horr-sf

First the good stuff: I liked this book, although it reads more like urban fantasy than the mystery book it was sold to me as. I especially liked how in this parallel UK, literature is one of the most prized things of the culture: profitable black market for first edition forgeries, vending machines dispensing Shakespeare quotations, kids swapping author trading cards, etc. The character of Thursday Next was complicated and intriguing enough to hold my sympathies and interest. Now the bad: this ...more

like 4 likes 1 comment

Dec 20, 2007

Yanchovy rated it

Recommends it for: Hmm....

Okay, I read this book a couple of years ago, upon recommendation, so I am going off of what I remember of the book.

What I remember is this: will do in a pinch. If you are bored, and need something light and breezy and fun to read, something with a fantastical premise and lots of magic, but something that's not Harry Potter, this might be it. It's kind of like a conspiracy-mystery-Harry Potter novel for adults.

I found the premise interesting, about fiction and "re ...more

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Aug 13, 2007

Mzbluestocking rated it

Book for book people. Very clever and very entertaining.

Notes:
"So often Mr Right turned out to be either Mr Liar, Mr. Drunk, of Mr. Already Married."

"As the saying goes: if you want to get into SpecOps, act kinda weird."

Speaking of love, "When you've been there you know it, like seeing a Turner or going on a walk of the west coast of Ireland."

"My mind was young and the barrier between reality and make-believ ...more

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Dec 27, 2008

Lightreads rated it

Shelves: derivative-fiction, fiction, science-fiction, urban-fantasy

Okay, this is complicated, so it might take a while. In an alternate England of the 1980’s, literature is bigger than football and a production of Richard III is like a Beatles concert. Thursday E. Next (and others with Rowlingesque names), a literary Detective, becomes embroiled in the struggle between megacorp Goliath and the evil murderer Acheron Hades for her uncle’s latest invention, the Prose Portal, which allows people and things to travel between fiction and reality. It’s a new kin ...more Okay, this is complicated, so it might take a while. In an alternate England of the 1980’s, literature is bigger than football and a production of Richard III is like a Beatles concert. Thursday E. Next (and others with Rowlingesque names), a literary Detective, becomes embroiled in the struggle between megacorp Goliath and the evil murderer Acheron Hades for her uncle’s latest invention, the Prose Portal, which allows people and things to travel between fiction and reality. It’s a new kind of terrorism when a madman can enter the original manuscript of a Dickens novel and murder a minor character, rewriting every copy in existence. The universe and technology are top notch, from the pet dodo (version 1.4) to the retinal screensaver to the Global Standard Deity to Thursday’s rogue Chronoguard, time hopping father. Thursday’s world is different from ours – Churchill was never Prime Minister, the Crimean War grinds on, and though everyone loves Jane Eyre, no one is really happy with how Jane goes off to India with St. John in the end. This is a book about rewriting – history, time, culture, your life and choices, and in that sense it is damn clever and I enjoyed the hell out of it. I am bothered by many stylistic choices, however, particularly the way every moment of emotional significance is pushed offstage and dealt with only in the tiny excerpts from characters’ memoirs and other fictional books at the beginning of each chapter. Just because it’s metafiction, it doesn’t mean it can’t be good fiction, too, and there really is no excuse for this.

More broadly speaking, all the fictional characters within the fiction, like Mr. Rochester, are explicitly aware that they are in a book and behave accordingly, and it took me a while to realize that Thursday, our narrator, operates similarly. I just don’t really dig that kind of consciousness – it’s ironic that a book which is all about sliding through the border into fiction is written in such a way to make doing so as a reader nearly impossible (aside from some of the emotional dampening, Fforde violates the first person narration in wild and distractingly strange ways). And what was up with the random vampire not-even-a-subplot?

Complaints aside, and all except the random vampires are really products of my strong personal tastes, I liked this a whole lot. It’s quirky and clever and fun, and I’ll definitely be carrying on with the series.

(less)

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Aug 18, 2010

Cecily rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: humour, miscellaneous-fiction, overrated, sci-fi-or-futuristic

I didn't enjoy this. It tries too hard to be clever and to cover many different genres (humour, sci fi, horror, detective, literary and more) whilst also being annoyingly silly. After 100 pages I ditched it - something I rarely do.

Thursday Next is a woman who is a literary detective in one of several alternative realities round about now. In hers, the Crimean War is still going. Somehow, in her society, manuscripts are stolen and guns are involved; she also manages to get into books ...more

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Aug 13, 2008

MAP rated it

Shelves: fiction, humor, scifi-fantasy

This and all its sequels are like a wonderful addictive drug. Full of humor, wit, intelligence, allusions galore, hilarious characters, and impossibly imaginative situations, this book has something for everyone. But it doesn't spoon feed you: in order to get the humor, Fforde expects you to have a fairly in depth knowledge of British literature. One of the few books around today that is genuinely fun and funny, but expects you to keep up with its fast pace and intelligent humor.

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Jul 15, 2007

Sarah Null rated it

Recommends it for: Literature geeks

Shelves: books-about-books, brit-lit, favorites, magic-and-sci-fi, owned

This book was really fun. It was sort of bizarre and hard to get into at first due to its semi sci-fi nature, but once I got into it I quite enjoyed it. The literary references were a hoot and the names of the characters were very, well, punny. For example, one of the antagonists is called Jack Schitt. This book is about what can happen when your favorite book comes to life... literally.

like 3 likes 1 comment

Jul 23, 2009

Scot rated it

Great series to discover for some fun summer reading. This is the first Thursday Next fantasy/adventure/mystery/humor book. She's a literary detective in an alternative UK in the 1980s. Wales is a People's Republic, the Crimean War never stopped, her dad is a Time Cop, her uncle a brilliant but scatterbrained scientist, her pet a cloned dodo. Her evil nemesis, Acheron Hades (an example of the great character names in this book) is out to destroy literature. This is a society where everyone ...more

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Jul 04, 2010

Shawn Sorensen rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, humor

The ultimate challenge with writing this book must have been limiting the author's imagination. It ALREADY has characters racing through the novel Jane Eyre, a father going back and forth in time and also freezing it, already has a huge corporation with its fingers in all of the British government's pies. The novel works in this, it's final abbreviated form. It does read a little bit like Jasper Forde had to keep it down to an arbitrary number of pages, but the only relationship that suffers ...more

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Aug 17, 2008

Michele rated it

I had heard about this book a few times, but nothing really specific until a review that talked about the way literature and life get mixed up together in the text. I figured that was good enough reason to give it a try.

The book was a fun read - it is highly fantastical, which requires a significant suspension of disbelief, particularly since the premise for many of the differences between the Britain of the text and the one we know is not well fleshed out. (The book is the beginning o ...more I had heard about this book a few times, but nothing really specific until a review that talked about the way literature and life get mixed up together in the text. I figured that was good enough reason to give it a try.

The book was a fun read - it is highly fantastical, which requires a significant suspension of disbelief, particularly since the premise for many of the differences between the Britain of the text and the one we know is not well fleshed out. (The book is the beginning of a series, so perhaps it gets explained better later on)

*spoiler* Thursday Next works for SpecOps (short for Special Operations) in a Britain very different from today's - after WWII, the Goliath Corporation helped rebuild Britain, and in exchange, it now runs most of the country - an excellent example of the possibilities of conglomerate corporation governing multiple industries. One of the differences also lies in the continuing British fascination and love of its literature. Marlovians clash with Baconians and Shakespeareans while Bronte lovers decry the disappointing ending of Jane Eyre when Jane decides to follow John Rivers to India as his helpmate. Thursday is in pursuit of an arch criminal, Acheron Hades, who kills her partner and leaves her ill. Because people time travel (her father works for the Chronocorps) she is warned by a future self to take a job in her hometown of Swindon after leaving her unit of LiteraTecs in London. She does so, re-establishing relationships with an ex-boyfriend, and her uncle, who has invented the "proseportal" and bookworms - a combination that can send anybody into a book. There is leakage from books to reality and back as Rochester saves Thursday during an attack by Acheron and she herself entered Jane Eyre, changing the way Jane and Rochester meet by causing his horse to slip in avoiding her.

Acheron kidnaps Thursday's uncle and the portal, sending himself into Jane Eyre, but Thursday follows. Meanwhile, the Bronte society monitors the changes in the text from the lobby of an old hotel in the Republic of Wales (unfriendly to its English visitors, which Thursday has had to sneak into). Hades causes the fire and death of Bertha in our version as well as the blinding and maiming of Rochester, and Thursday provides the ghostly voice Jane hears that draws her back to Thornfield. Having improved the ending and ensured Hades death, Thursday reunites with her ex-boyfriend (engaged to another woman) with the help of Mr. Briggs (the same solicitor that broke up Rochester and Jane's wedding and who is sent out in to the world by Rochester).

The whole play with literature, the porous boundaries between the world and lit, and the thought of a world in which literature is still very much alive were all elements that delighted an egghead like me reading this book. (less)

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about Jasper Fforde

Jasper Fforde is a novelist living in Wales. He is the son of John Standish Fforde, the 24th Chief Cashier for the Bank of England, whose signature used to appear on sterling banknotes, and is cousin of the author, Katie Fforde. His early career was spent as a focus puller in the film industry, where he worked on a number of films including Quills, GoldenEye, and Entrapment.

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