Fforde,Jasper. The Eyre Affair

This fine first effort by this Welsh writer is a cross between time-traveling fantasy, time-bending science fiction, top-notch sleuthing, and extremely literate satire. It is Great Britain in 1985, time travel is routine. In fact, there is even a Special Ops: ChronoGuard which detects and regulates the variance of time. Literature is taken very, very seriously and SO-27, members of the Literary Detective Division are always busy looking for literary crimes like the counterfeit Coleridge or the fake Fielding. And don't even start them on who really wrote the Shakespeare plays--almost a religious fanaticism to devotees of one camp or another.

Thursday Next, Our Litratec, is a feisty and serious operative who finds herself involved with the diabolical and heinous theft of the original manuscript of Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit, and much later--even worse the almost-sacred manuscript of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Fans of this classic of British literature will rush back to its pages as the perfidy and time-stopping action provide a witty and wonderful waltz to the Thornfield of Rochester and Jane.

Without giving away delicious details, this novel has quirky, innovative and human characters who will make you laugh and sympathize, a delightful plot which zags and zigs in truly new ways, and writing that is full of irony, puns, and, if you know your literature--a revisiting of some very good stuff. This is outlandish and imaginative writing that invites non-science fiction/fantasy/mystery lovers to take the plunge into Fforde's world. A superb and entertaining effort.

Leane M. Ellis, February 27, 2002