Amazon.co.uk Review
Pirouetting on the boundaries between sci-fi, the crime thriller and intertextual whimsy, Jasper Fforde's outrageous The Eyre Affairputs you on the wrong footing even on its dedication page, which proudly announces that the book conforms to Crimean War economy standard.

Fforde's heroine, Thursday Next, lives in a world where time and reality are endlessly mutable--someone has ensured that the Crimean War never ended for example--a world policed by men like her disgraced father, whose name has been edited out of existence. She herself polices text--against men like the Moriarty-like Acheron Styx, whose current scam is to hold the minor characters of Dickens' novels to ransom, entering the manuscript and abducting them for execution and extinction one by one. When that caper goes sour, Styx moves on to the nation's most beloved novel--an oddly truncated version of Jane Eyre--and kidnaps its heroine. The phlegmatic and resourceful Thursday pursues Acheron across the border into a Leninist Wales and further to Mr Rochester's Thornfield Hall, where both books find their climax on the roof amid flames.

Fforde is endlessly inventive: his heroine's utter unconcern about the strangeness of the world she inhabits keeps the reader perpetually double-taking as minor certainties of history, literature and cuisine go soggy in the corner of our eye. The audacity of the premise and its working out provides sudden leaps of understanding, many of them accompanied by wild fits of the giggles. This is a peculiarly promising first novel. --Roz Kaveney

I will add my comment at the book as soon as I finish it. In the meanwhile, I put here the list of the Bookcrossers joining the bookring.

Blackadder75
UnwrittenLibra
Iliotropio
Etnagigante
MickyMicky
Tilly77
Heri77
Sonnenbarke
MartinaViola
Maddap

I am not in the mood to read this book at the moment, so I'd better let it leave and read your comments during the bookring. I will read it when it comes back to me ;)

Rules for the bookring are a few and simple:
1. make a JE when you receive the book, so that everybody can track where it is.
2. make a JE when you finish the book. Please, write something. I don't care if you didn't like the book, this is not the goal of the bookring: just try to be sincere and write what do you think about.
3. try not to hold the book for an infinite time. I don't mean that you have to read it in a day, but I guess that 4/5 weeks are enough. If you have any problem, just contact me and let me know.
4. contact the next person in the list to send the bookring. Give him/her a bit of time to answer. If you have no answer in a while, contact me and we'll decide what to do.
5. I usually ask not to do any release note for my bookrings. If you desperately want to make one, please remember to make a Controlled Release ;)
6. enjoy!

This came in today's mail. I will be starting it in a day or two.

It took me longer then I expected to finish with this book. Life just kept getting in the way. Sorry about holding it up!

I thought this was a very unusal and unique mystery. I loved how Jasper Fforde combined fantasy, mystery, humor and classic literature that made this a great book. I can't wait to read the rest of the series.

Received it safe and sound here in Amherst, Massachusetts...have about 5 or so bookrings ahead of this one but I will try to trudge through and have this off to the next reader by Christmas!

Finally catching up on all the book rings I've had for awhile and finished this one today over a cup of coffee.

I really loved meeting Thursday Next and the people in her world, but after looking at some reviews, I have to say that I agree with Fforde's critics on this one - the characters are really hard to keep track of and the chronology hard to follow, ChronoGuard notwithstanding. I found I really had to go back and reread certain parts to really make sure who certain similar-sounding characters were (Bowden, Braxton, Anton, Landen...) and the beginning was a bit slow. Still, I think I'll be on the lookout for the sequel. Maybe it was the excessive British-isms that confused me. Still, the last third of the book was a really exciting tale and I wish that the beginning exposition was pruned back and the book focused more on the actual Eyre Affair.

That being said, after I check to make sure I've got iliotropio's correct address (it's been several months since I've sent her anything) this Eyre Affair is off in the air, to Belgium!

Off to iliotropio today via Mt. Washington, MD...bon voyage little book!

The book is here and I´m already half way through it.
Many thanks UnwrittenLibra for sending it!

Extraordinary, witty, a must read for all booklovers.
On its way to Italy.

This Saturday I met Thursday.

Take centuries of British literature, a big bad guy, a different history for the real world and you'll have this novel. Jasper Fforde plays with own rules and wins the game, for the characters are vivid and interesting, all the items created by Mycroft are wonderful and Thursday is a wannahave friend. Narrating what is written in this book isn't simple, for we have lots of crazy events. But it is funny playing with real novels and kidnapping Jane Eyre, among the others, from the pages she is written in.
Twist the time-space and read this book.

The book is here, thanks!

The book is leaving today towards Tilly 77 since Girosauro didn't answer and Hayes has already read it. I didn't enjoy the book too much, maybe it is too confusing for me. Thanks anyway for the ring, happy reading everyone!

it's here!

Funny and witty, I loved it! Thursday is adorable and the mix between real world and fiction is brilliant!

Thank you Lizzy and sorry for the delay... I will send it to Heri after Christmas holidays!

EDIT 09/01: sent today!!

It's now in my hands!

Thanks for this great ring! The book is now travelling to Sonnenbarke.

It's here with me! I can't wait to read it!

A real page-turner if there ever was one, I couldn't stop reading it! I really, really liked it and I'm planning to buy the other books of the series as well... I'm also thinking of giving them to my sister as a birthday present in two weeks' time :-)

The book is here! :)
I have a few rings ahead but I'll do my best to read it as soon as I can! :D

Usually I prefer books that deal with ordinary life, so I didn't think I would have liked so much a story in which there is a great part of fantasy.
Jasper Fforde has done a great job: he succeeded in mixing adventure and literature and in constructing an alternative and very fascinating 1985.
The setting, in fact, is the aspect of the book I appreciated most.
Even the characther of Thursady Next didn't disappoint me: she was well defined in a way that didn't sound too obvious. She's professional, brave, stubborn and rarely romantic: she's a great heroine, with her personal weaknesses.

The most impressive point of the story is the fact that fiction is another part of reality, not something that exists only on the page: there are a lot of people beyond the words we read and maybe we'll meet them one day.
I think every reader has imagined and desired something like this to happen.

I can't wait to read the second adventure of miss Next! :D
Thank you Lizzy for sharing this wonderful read!

The book will soon be on its way to Maddap... :D

The book is here.

A world where people fight for owning the manuscript of a book, where every classical author has thousands of fans with his same name, where everyone is really worried about Jane Eyre kidnapping...can exist only in sci-fi. And this literary sci-fi novel is very very amusing. Moreover Thursday Next is as a fantastic romantic heroine as Jane herself. Thanks for the reading, Lizzy, I hope that all the enthusiastic comments about the book will persuade you to read it soon. It's on the way back towards you.

The book is here with me :) Thanx to all of you for your comments and everything you left in the book!

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