Finally I find a book which has annoying chapter top quotes that actually add something to the story and are therefor not annoying. Usually this device just drags me out of a story as I try (and fail) to figure out the relevance of the quote and I end up ignoring them. In this book the quotes are all as fictional as the chapters and are quotes from accompanying texts to the main story: they are taken from biographies of the characters, their journals and the like. This means that they add to the tale, they pre empt the chapters without giving anything away. They’re one of the best added extras of storytelling that I’ve seen.

This story is set in an alternate 1985 with many, many references to how things might have been if history had taken a slightly different course. Some of this is obvious but much of it is buried deep and makes you laugh when you uncover it. The ongoing Crimean war is a major part of the book and references to the People’s Republic of Wales abound. Other examples are characters “thanking GSD”, the Global Standard Deity, and references to former Luftwaffe bases where you expect RAF ones. The author has dreamed up an alternate universe that’s very familiar and very weird at the same time.

The Eyre Affair of the title refers to the problems that abound when Jane Eyre is stolen from Charlotte Bronte’s original manuscript and our hero, Literary Detective Thursday Next, has to put everything back how it should be, more or less. One of my problems with the book is that the Eyre business doesn’t appear until two thirds of the way into the book and although it doesn’t spoil it in any sense it seems a bit of an odd title for a long time. The book has a beginning that draws you in and an ending that delivers, but I found the middle a little put downable, perhaps Jane Eyre coild have turned up sooner.

On the whole I really liked the book, I saw someone else describe it as literate but not literary and I’d agree. There’s plenty of fun to be had even if you don’t have the vaguest idea of the plot of Jane Eyre, the author took care to explain everything necessary to his plot and definitely isn’t practising any kind of literary snobbery. An original and exciting story, I hope that there’s more that’s just as good.