The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
5 Rating(s)
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The Eyre Affair
A Thursday Next Novel

Author: Jasper Fforde

Narrator: Susan Duerden

Unabridged: 12 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 12/30/2009


Synopsis

The first in a series of outlandishly clever adventures featuring the resourceful, fearless literary detective Thursday Next—a New York Times bestseller!In Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, 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 and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Brontë's novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career. Fforde's ingenious fantasy—enhanced by a Web site that re-creates the world of the novel—unites intrigue with English literature in a delightfully witty mix.

About The Author

Jasper Fforde traded a varied career in the film industry for staring vacantly out the window and arranging words on a page. He lives and writes in Wales. The Eyre Affair was his first novel in the bestselling Thursday Next series. He is also the author of Shades of Grey and the Nursery Crime series.Susan Duerden’s career spans film, television, theater, voice-overs, and animation. She has played critically acclaimed and award-winning theatrical roles on London’s West End and Off Broadway; narrated many audiobooks, including The Tiger’s Wife and The Eyre Affair; acted in the features Lovewrecked and Flushed Away; and held a recurring role on ABC’s Lost.


Reviews

AudiobooksNow review by Eugenia on 2007-09-04 18:17:14

Obviously, the author is drawing upon a rich literary education that not everyone shares but knowledge of the literature he is citing (and often poking fun at) is not mandatory. It's a rollicking good adventure set in a strange but absorbing universe that Fforde obviously spent a great deal of imagination in and enjoyed creating. Fforde has a strong voice but also has the surprising ability to mimic the voices of the literary greats.

Goodreads review by Mario the lone bookwolf on June 25, 2023

Hardly an author has styled the parallel universe tropes with breaking the wall elements to such perfection as Ffjorde did. Mix everything together The integration of living literature in a parallel universe as a plot device is ingenious and a potentially endless source of innuendos, connotations, and......more

Goodreads review by J.L. on March 01, 2020

Really enjoyed the inventiveness of Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair. The premise of the story is that original manuscripts can be stolen and then changed, not just that manuscript, but all copies of say, Jane Eyre. Thus, these original manuscripts are viewed as absolute treasures. There are also lit......more

Goodreads review by James on September 21, 2017

This book may describe my perfect job goal: to be able to enter a book and meet the characters, ensuring they are following the author's original intentions and not "on-the-loose" due to some sort of villain. How amazing would that be? Awesome kick start to this series... I read the first 4 then sta......more

Goodreads review by Gail on April 29, 2015

I loved this book when I first picked it up and remember giggling the whole way through. (It was passed over to me by the Mum, of all people. We do not, normally, share the same taste in literature.) It has a charming irreverent take on... well... everything from literature to history. It's set in a......more

Goodreads review by Manny on September 24, 2014

This is so much fun. I want to play too! And, as it happens, I have a surprisingly good opening. So, with the usual perfunctory apologies, may I present The Meyre Affair: a Thursday Next story The hardest part is telling them they're fictional. After that, the rest is usually easy. - Thursday Next, A......more


Quotes

“Neatly delivers alternate history, Monty Pythonesque comedy skits, Grand Guignol supervillains, thwarted lovers, po-mo intertextuality, political commentary, time travel, vampires, absent-minded inventors, a hard-boiled narrator, and lots, lots more. . . . Suspend your disbelief, find a quiet corner and just surrender to the storytelling voice of the unstoppable, ever-resourceful Thursday Next.”
—The Washington Post

“Fforde’s imaginative novel will satiate readers looking for a Harry Potter-esque tale. . . . The Eyre Affair’s literary wonderland recalls Douglas Adams’s Hitchhikers series, the works of Lewis Carroll and Woody Allen’s The Kugelmass Episode.”
USA Today

“[Thursday Next is] part Bridget Jones, part Nancy Drew, and part Dirty Harry.”
—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“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.” 
The Wall Street Journal

“Jasper Fforde’s first novel, The Eyre Affair, is a spirited sendup of genre fiction—it’s part hardboiled mystery, part time-machine caper—that features a sassy, well-read ‘Special Operative in literary detection’ named Thursday Next, who will put you more in mind of Bridget Jones than Miss Marple.  Fforde delivers almost every sentence with a sly wink, and he’s got an easy way with wordplay, trivia, and inside jokes. . . . Fforde’s verve is rarely less than infectious.” 
The New York Times Book Review

“Jasper Fforde’s genre-busting, whoppingly imaginative first novel, The Eyre Affair, is packed with literary allusions . . . .Thanks to Fforde’s terrific imagination, this definitely will not be the winter of our discontent.”
The Miami Herald

“For sheer inventiveness his book is hard to beat. The Eyre Affair is an exuberant mélange of crime, comedy and alternative history.”
Houston Chronicle

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde could hardly be more delightful. . . . It takes a bold adventurer to play fast and loose with literature, and that’s what we have in Thursday Next and Fforde.”
Newsday

“[Fforde] delivers multiple plot twists, rampant literary references and streams of wild metafictional invention in a novel that places literature at the center of the pop-cultural universe. . . . It all adds up to a brainy, cheerfully twisted adventure.”
Time Out New York

A blend of suspense and silliness, two parts fantasy (think Alice in Wonderland meet Superman), two parts absurdity (anything by Carl Hiaasen) and one part mystery (Agatha Christie meets Sue Grafton).”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Her name is Next. Thursday Next. And her story is as amusing and intriguing as the summary of her story told within the pages of The Eyre Affair. Next is a literary detective in a world so enamored with the written world that Shakespeare’s Richard III is staged nightly as if it were The Rocky Horror Picture Show . . . . The novel’s writing flows and the imaginative twists and turns in Next’s world are handled smoothly.”
Sun-Sentinel

'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 London

"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 (London)


Awards

  • Alex Award - YALSA