Books › The Eyre Affair
The Eyre Affair
539 pages
A delightfully absurd, pun-filled romp through an alternate reality where literature is a matter of life, death, and time travel.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like stepping into a wildly inventive, literary funhouse where the rules of reality are rewritten by a madcap bibliophile. The pace is brisk and bouncy, pulling you through a delightfully absurd alternate Britain where people riot over surrealism and clone dodos for pets. It is a deeply bookish experience, soaked in a zany, eccentric mood that rewards readers who know their Brontë from their Bacon. The prose is witty and dense with clever wordplay, delivered with a deadpan earnestness that makes the bizarre world-building feel entirely plausible. It is a joyful, propulsive romp designed for literature nerds and fans of British satire who want to experience the sheer, unadulterated thrill of seeing fiction bleed into reality.
- Mood
- zany
- bookish
- eccentric
- adventurous
- Tone
- wry
- playful
- satirical
- clever
- deadpan
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- the magic of reading · blurring of fiction and reality · bureaucratic absurdity · literary devotion
- The writing
- Witty, dense with literary puns and wordplay, and delivered with a deadpan earnestness that heightens the absurdity.
- The arc
- Moves from bewildered amusement at a bizarre alternate reality to thrilling, high-stakes literary heroism.
- Who it's for
- Bibliophiles who love British humor, clever puns, and the idea of stepping literally inside their favorite classic novels.
Content notes
- gun violence
- kidnapping
- war themes
About the book
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. Baconians are trying to convince the world that Francis Bacon really wrote Shakespeare, there are riots between the Surrealists and Impressionists, and thousands of men are named John Milton, an homage to the real Milton and a very confusing situation for the police. Amidst all this, Acheron Hades, Third Most Wanted Man In the World, steals the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and kills a minor character, who then disappears from every volume of the novel ever printed! But that's just a prelude... Hades' real target is the beloved Jane Eyre, and it's not long before he plucks her from the pages of Bronte's novel. Enter Thursday Next. She's the Special Operative's renowned literary detective, and she drives a Porsche. With the help of her uncle Mycroft's Prose Portal, Thursday enters the novel to rescue Jane Eyre from this heinous act of literary homicide. It's tricky business, all these interlopers running about Thornfield, and deceptions run rampant as their paths cross with Jane, Rochester, and Miss Fairfax. Can Thursday save Jane Eyre and Bronte's masterpiece? And what of the Crimean War? Will it ever end? And what about those annoying black holes that pop up now and again, sucking things into time-space voids... Suspenseful and outlandish, absorbing and fun, The Eyre Affair is a caper unlike any other and an introduction to the imagination of a most distinctive writer and his singular fictional universe. Next up in the Thursday Next series: Lost in a Good Book. Read more about it at thursdaynext.com.
Description from Open Library.
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