[1] It takes place in an alternative 1985, where literary detective Thursday Next pursues a master criminal through the world of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel Jane Eyre.

The plot revolves around Thursday Next, a single, thirty-six-year-old woman who is a veteran of the Crimean War and a literary detective who lives in London with her pet dodo Pickwick.

As the story begins, Thursday is promoted to assist in the capture of a wanted terrorist, Acheron Hades, her former university professor who has become a mysterious criminal mastermind.

Thursday is the only living person who can recognize him, and nearly captures him during a stakeout, but Hades possesses several superhuman abilities, such as mental manipulation and extreme durability, and uses those powers to withstand her gunfire.

During a flashback to her childhood, Thursday remembers a seemingly supernatural event, whereby she was able to physically enter the world of the novel and briefly became acquainted with Rochester.

She also meets a time-traveling future version of herself, who warns her that Hades survived the accident, and instructs her to take a LiteraTec job in her home town of Swindon.

She takes the job, and while visiting her family there, she discovers that her brilliant Uncle Mycroft and Aunt Polly have created the Prose Portal, a device that allows people to enter works of fiction.

After several weeks in the novel (which pass in the outside world much more quickly, as the book rewrites itself after Jane is returned) and much trouble, she succeeds in killing Hades and recovering the poem with Polly in it.

Thursday also discovers that the characters in the book must continually relive their lives, with full knowledge of how events turn out, and are unable to alter any of them.

The book was generally acclaimed, with critics calling it "playfully irreverent",[4] "delightfully daft",[5] "whoppingly imaginative",[6] and "a work of ... startling originality".

[5] The "genre-busting"[6] novel spans numerous types of literature, with critics identifying aspects of fantasy, science fiction, mystery, satire, romance, and thriller.

[10] One critic wondered if Fforde was more "Monty Python crossed with Terry Pratchett, or J. K. Rowling mixed with Douglas Adams.

The Eyre Affair takes that feeling, the moment you lose the sense of yourself and become engrossed in the story, and creates high adventure and wild drama around the porous boundaries between fiction and real life.

"[13]Some reviewers criticised the novel for "convoluted"[6] plots and "dangling details",[11] as well as inconsistent dialogue that "can veer from wittily wicked to non-sequitur",[7] and minor characters who "drift in and out of scenes".