The Eyre affair : a novel

Summary: Great Britain circa 1985: time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodas are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. Based on an imaginary world where time and reality bend in the most convincing and original way since The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Eyre Affair is a delightful rabbit hole of a read: once you fall in you may never come back. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in Wordsworth poems, militant Baconians roam freely spreading the gospel that Bacon, not Shakespeare, penned those immortal works. And forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. This is all business as usual for brainy, bookish (and heat-packing) Thursday Next, a renowned Special Operative in literary detection -- that is, until someone begins murdering characters from works of literature. When this madman plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Bronte's novel Thursday faces the challenge of her career. Aided and abetted by characters that include her time-traveling father, an executive of the all-powerful Goliath Corporation, and Edward Rochester himself, Thursday must track down the world's Third Most Wanted criminal and enter the novel herself to avert a heinous act of literary homicide. A brilliantly outlandish and absorbing caper destined to become a classic adventure tale, The Eyre Affair is an irresistible thriller and the introduction to the imagination of a most distinctive writer. In Jasper Fforde's singular fictional universe no literary character is safe from crime. And for Special Operative Thursday Next this is only the beginning ...

Item details

ISBN: 0142001805
ISBN: 9780142001806
ISBN: 9781435282032 (Paw Prints)
ISBN: 1435282035 (Paw Prints)
ISBN: 9780613629010 (hc)
ISBN: 0613629019
Physical Description: print
vii, 374 p. ; 20 cm.
Publisher: New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Penguin Books, 2003.

Contents / Notes

General Note:

Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2001.

Formatted Contents Note:

A woman named Thursday Next -- Gad's Hill -- Back at my desk -- Acheron Hades -- Search for the guilty, punish the innocent -- Jane Eyre: a short excursion into the novel -- The Goliath corporation -- Airship to Swindon -- The Next family -- The Finis Hotel, Swindon -- Polly flashes upon the inward eye -- SpecOps-27: the literary detectives -- The church at Capel-y-ffin -- Lunch with Bowden -- Hello & goodbye, Mr. Quaverley -- Sturmey Archer and Felix7 -- SpecOps-17: suckers & biters -- Landen again -- The very irrev. Joffy Next -- Dr. Runcible Spoon -- Hades & Goliath -- The waiting game -- The drop -- Martin Chuzzlewit is reprieved -- Time enough for contemplation -- The earthcrossers -- Hades finds another manuscript -- Haworth House -- Jane Eyre -- A groundswell of popular feeling -- The People's Republic of Wales -- Thornfield Hall -- The book is written -- Nearly the end of their book -- Nearly the end of our book -- Married.