The cartoonish characters are either all good or all bad, but the villain's comeuppance is still satisfying. The plethora of oddly named characters can be confusing, and the story's episodic nature means that the action moves forward in fits and starts. When the manuscript of Jane Eyre, Next's favorite novel, disappears, and Jane herself is spirited out of the book, Next must pursue Hades inside Charlotte Bront 's masterpiece. The evil Acheron Hades has plans for it: after kidnapping Next's mad-scientist uncle, Mycroft, and commandeering Mycroft's invention, the Prose Portal, which enables people to cross into a literary text, he sends a minion into Chuzzlewit to seize and kill a minor character, thus forever changing the novel.

In this world where high lit matters, Special Operative Thursday Next (literary detective) seeks to retrieve the stolen manuscript of Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit. For pennies, corner Will-Speak machines will quote Shakespeare Richard III is performed with audience participation la Rocky Horror and children swap Henry Fielding bubble-gum cards. The scene: Great Britain circa 1985, but a Great Britain where literature has a prominent place in everyday life. Surreal and hilariously funny, this alternate history, the debut novel of British author Fforde, will appeal to lovers of zany genre work (think Douglas Adams) and lovers of classic literature alike. 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. 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. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. 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.

Wodehouse will love visiting Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, when time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously: it’s a bibliophile’s dream. Jasper Fforde’s beloved New York Times bestselling novel introduces literary detective Thursday Next and her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England-from the author of The Constant Rabbitįans of Douglas Adams and P. Meet Thursday Next, literary detective without equal, fear or boyfriend

The eyre affair book