The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next #1) [J0342]

2003 PB with minor wear. The first novel in the renowned Thursday Next series. A literary detective without equal, fear, or boyfriend-and welcome to a surreal version of Great Britain, circa 1985, where time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wadsworth poem, militant Baconians heckle performances of Hamlet, and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday, renowned Special Operative in literary detection, until someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature. When Jane Eyre is plucked from the pages of Brontë's novel, Thursday must track down the villain and enter a novel herself to avert a heinous act of literary homicide.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "The literary references were spot on, including the ongoing debate of who wrote plays attributed to Shakespeare."; "I enjoyed the wacky, clever writing and way Fforde uses time travel to turn everything in Jane Eyre on its head."; "Creative, quirky, charming, surprising, clever, delightful, and thoroughly original."