This amazing book is difficult to describe, even its author and publishers admit that. It is basically a book geek’s fantasy. Set in an alternative 1980s, the reader is thrown into a world where literature is so important that they need a special police force (be it a little underfunded) to control book crime and theories on the real identity of Shakespeare are punted door-to-door by overzealous Baconians.

There are unavoidable spoilers in this review from this point onwards. Feel free to go and read the book and then return to the review and see if I got it right….. or do you need a little more tempting?

As the book progresses, we are introduced to the idea it is possible to enter books, and for fictional characters, known as book people, to enter the ‘real’ world. When Acheron Hades starts stealing original manuscripts, Thursday Next, the strong main character (in all meanings of the phrase), must find them before they change too much – because changing the original manuscript from within the book changes every version across the world! He is holding her inventor Uncle Mycroft and Aunt Polly against their will so that he can use of Mycroft’s new ‘Prose Portal’ to enter the manuscripts. Things get really serious when Jane Eyre is kidnapped and Brontë’s masterpiece faces the biggest crisis ever confronted by a work of fiction – the loss of the first person narrator. Will Thursday save Jane Eyre, and will the book be better for her efforts? And why do the Goliath Corporation want the Portal so badly?

However, The Eyre Affair is much more than this. It is a delicious combination of literary in-jokes (full of secret pleasure), strange scientific advancements (Dodos (plock plock) and other extinct mammals are common pets thanks to home splicing kits), and a clever satire on corporations and war. The characters stand out as extraordinary, from her friend Spike who polices the dark side and cannot work during the day to her time-travelling ex-Chronoguard father who is wanted throughout history. And woven into this is a complicated war-worn love interest, as Landon Parke-Laine, one-legged veteran and writer, steps back into Thursday’s world again after 10 years and she must decide whether she can forgive him for what he did to her brother or lose the love of her life.

Plunge head first into the fantasy and you will enjoy every minute. Fforde’s weird and wonderful imagination is warm and welcoming. And the good news that this is just the first in a strong series – book lovers, just dive in.

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