Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair
is an amazing book for any book lover, and especially for a Jane Eyre fan like myself. It is the first novel in the Thursday Next series. Thursday is a literary detective living in London. The novel takes place in a different universe where Russia and England have been fighting for an extended period of time. At the beginning of the novel she is investigating the novel Martin Chuzzlewit and almost hast tracked down the criminal who has been messing with the book, Hades, when she is injured. She survives because of a copy of Jane Eyre in her breast pocket, and when she awakes she finds materials left from Rochester.
This isn't the first time Thursday has seen Rochester. When she was a young girl she went into the story and saw Rochester and Jane's meeting, forever altering the reaction of Rochester's dog Pilot. In the world Thursday lives in Jane Eyre ended quite differently from the way we know the story. In her world Jane ends up marrying her dopey cousin St. John. This is about all we know and hear of Jane Eyre for the majority of the novel, which I must admit made me sad. I mostly kept reading to find out what was going to happen with the book. I will say that I loved Thursdays character though, and I enjoyed the book the whole way through even if it wasn't exactly what I wanted.
Thursday decides to return to her childhood home to find the villainous Hades. Here she is confronted with several obstacles, but is particularly bothered by her old boyfriend Landen Parke-Laine. Landen wants to get back together with Thursday, and she would comply if she could only get past what she feels was the betrayal of her brother. Landen, Thursday, and her brother all fought in the war together. Landen outed her brother for a mistake after his death which Thursday has never been able to forgive Landen for.
This was a great read with lots of fun puns and literary wonder. It took me a little while to get into but I think I will pick up the next in the Thursday Next series sometime in the future.
Pub. Date: February 2003
Publisher: Penguin Group
Format: Paperback, 384 pp
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