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The New York Times bestseller and the wildly inventive sixth installment of a series that has more than one million copies (and counting) in print.
Dazzlingly funny and imaginative, Jasper Fforde's books have won him the affection of readers, reviewers, and-dare we say it-booksellers alike. Fans can breathe a sigh of relief because Thursday Next-or at least one of her-is back. At a time of great unrest in the BookWorld, only the ace literary detective can avert a devastating Genre War-thing is, Thursday has vanished. Now the written Thursday must answer the call, save the Bookworld, evade capture, and find the actual Thursday! With a clockwork Butler in tow, and Men in Plaid as well as her Designated Love Interest in pursuit, she must reluctantly agree to journey up the mysterious Metaphoric River for answers. Thursday’s zany investigations continue with Jasper Fforde’s latest bestseller, The Woman Who Died A Lot. Visit jasperfforde.com for a ffull window into the Ffordian world!
Any intersection between Fforde's novels and a recognizably real world are almost entirely coincidental, for he's most at home in constructing insouciant (and elaborate) literary fantasies.
Thursday Next, the protagonist of many of the author's previous novels, is back...or rather, she's not, for she's the missing girl of the title. And although she vanishes, the written Thursday Next does not. The plot involves the search for the "real" Thursday Next, when she disappears a week before peace talks preceding the possible outbreak of a genre war, so the written Thursday Next sets out to find her. (Yes, it's all a bit confusing, and Fforde has great fun ringing changes on this confusion.) Written Thursday Next is on the case, exploring the various byways of BookWorld and eventually going up the mighty Metaphoric River, with its echoes of Conrad. Of course, in Fforde's fictive world almost everything has some kind of literary echo: Cabbies take the written Thursday to Norland Park (from Sense and Sensibility); she meets Jay Gatsby's less famous brother, the Loser Gatsby (younger sibling to the Mediocre Gatsby); she learns that Heathcliff is riding the same train she is (and notes "a lot of screaming and fainting girls on the platform whenever we stopped"); has drinks at the Bar Humbug; and comes across signs like "Do Not Feed the Ambiguity." Fforde, of course, finds all of this highly diverting and even includes sly references to The Eyre Affair, an earlier Thursday Next novel. To appreciate Fforde, it's both helpful and essential for a reader to have a substantial literary background. While some of the gags are sly and work well (for example, the confusion about whether a character named Red Herring is actually a red herring), others are rather forced and seem to exist solely for the sake of a punch line ("I think we've driven into a mimefield").
Your appreciation of Fforde will depend solely on your tolerance for self-conscious, and occasionally slick, literary cleverness.
Jasper Fforde traded a varied career in the film industry for staring vacantly out of the window and arranging words on a page. He lives and writes in Wales. The Eyre Affair was his first novel in the bestselling series of Thursday Next novels, which includes Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, First Among Sequels, One of Our Thursdays is Missing, and The Woman Who Died A Lot. The series has more than one million copies (and counting) in print. He is also the author of The Big Over Easy and The Fourth Bear of the Nursery Crime series, Shades of Grey, and books for young readers, including The Last Dragonslayer. Visit jasperfforde.com.
Author biography courtesy of Penguin Group (USA).
Fforde tells us in our interview that he got the idea for Pickwick, Thursday's pet dodo, from a visit to the Oxford Natural History Museum. "There was a stuffed dodo there and a withered foot and beak -- the only physical evidence aside from bones that they were ever alive at all," Fforde recalls. "I wandered for a bit and then asked the woman at the museum shop if I could buy a dodo home-cloning kit. She told me to come back in 20 years. That weekend, I wrote in Pickwick."
Fforde continued to reveal another fun fact: "The name of Thursday's husband, Landen Parke-Laine, comes from what happens if you are playing Monopoly and land on the first of the blue set -- a U.S. translation might be 'Landen Boarde-Walke.' Hence, his parents' names, mentioned in Lost in a Good Book, are 'Houson Parke-Laine' and 'Billden Parke-Laine.' "
Little_Flyer_Speaks
Posted March 14, 2012
It's been a long while since I read the preceding entry in this series (Thursday Next: First Among Sequels), and it took me awhile to settle back into the sort of crazed pace paying attention to apparently-silly-but-frequently-pivotal puns and points of reference, but IT ALL PAID OFF! Hang in there fans, all the bizarre loose ends were tied up and the take-offs on various genres were well worth the wait. Highly recommended!
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Posted January 30, 2012
This was a great step in the series, allowing readers to experience the world of Thursday Next from a new P.O.V.
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Posted January 2, 2012
I love reading Jasper Fforde's books especially the Thursday Next stories. Loved it. There is some very creative writing and his books inspire me to read more classics.
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Posted January 23, 2012
I loved this book. I'm a huge fan of the series and i highly recommend all of Jasper's books. I first read The Eyre Affair in my comparative lit class and I couldn't put it down. After that I got all of Jasper's books. Jasper Fforde is one of my favorite authors.
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Posted January 3, 2012
Even though I love Fforde's work, I was a bit reluctant to read this one because I didn't care for the synopsis. Once I finally settled in to read the work, I found that I loved the new direction the series was taking. The ending didn't go quite as far as I would have liked it to, but overall, it was still a great work.
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Posted December 30, 2011
I Also Recommend:
I have enjoyed every book that Fforde has written including this one. It was definitely worth reading, but not as original as the first couple books in his Thursday Next series. I think Fforde's brilliant "book world" can provide material for at least another one or two books, but this one felt more like a spin-off to me rather than a continuation of Thursday's original story.
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Posted June 20, 2011
Love this series
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Posted June 19, 2011
The only problem with Mr. Fforde's books is that you can't put them down once you've started one and once you're done, you have at least another year or two before he comes out with another one. The latest in the Thursday Next series didn't disappoint. Do yourself a favor, if you like this series, give his other two a shot as well. You won't regret it.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.It's been almost four years since the last installment of the Thursday Next series, but One of Our Thursdays Is Missing: A Novel by Jasper Fforde was well worth the wait. The novel follows the Written Thursday as she traverses BookWorld looking for the Real Thursday, who seems to have gone missing while deep undercover.
The majority of the story takes place in BookWorld, which has recently undergone a remaking based on a geographic model. The peace talks between Racy Novel and Women's Fiction and Dogma are coming up fast and the Written Thursday is being pressed upon from all sides to find the Real Thursday or replace her at the peace talks. Her journey takes us all around the BookWorld, through fiction and non-fiction, with interesting treks into Vanity and Fan Fiction. Along the way, she manages a trip into the Outland, where she finally meets her love, Landon. Landon is killed off early in the written series, so the Written Thursday has spent her life longing for someone she's never known. Her trip to the Outland raises questions about her identity: could she possibly be the Real Thursday? Suffering from some sort of delusion?
I love this series. The stories are original and smartly written. Fforde uses literary device to his own ends to create something spectacular. This is classic. He reminds me of Mark Twain in his use of humor to address societal issues, while still poking fun at himself and his work. I can't find strong enough words to explain how much I enjoy his work. If you haven't read any of the Thursday Next series, go get started on The Eyre Affair: A Thursday Next Novel.
Mr. Fforde, if you're out there, please do not make us wait another four years for Thursday. While worth the wait, not much out there that can fill the void while we await another Thursday Next adventure.
Thursday5 has been quietly running the revamped TN series, salvaged from the awful mess left by Thursday1-4's erasure (since the series was an awful mess to start with, there was probably no appreciable difference). She is summoned to an accident site (she has joined the accident investigation team since failing as a Jurisfiction cadet) but on the way she is accosted by an odd red-haired man....who hints that something has happened to the real Thursday Next. As Thursday5 goes about her accident investigation, she realizes this was no accident and she, as the written Thursday, is in as much danger as the real Thursday. Fans of Jasper Fforde will love Thursday5's impetuous journey through a revamped BookWorld in the company of a robot butler, chased by the Men in Plaid, and all under the darkening clouds of an all-out Genre War with Racy Novel. If you have yet to find your way to a Fforde novel, start with The Eyre Affair - it sets the stage for all Thursday's future stories - and enter the BookWorld proper in Lost in a Good Book.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.In BookWorld, the dispute between the various genres has not always been civilized as insults are literally ugly. The Council of genres tries to keep the peaceful coexistence from becoming a book burning battle in which everyone loses in that combat scenario. The Council needs a hero but cannot hold out for one any longer, as Thursday Next has retired and relocated in Realworld.
Desperate situations call for desperate measures. The Council asks the written version of Thursday Next to serve as the peacemaker and peacekeeper of the written (and other formats) word. She begins her mission traveling the Metaphoric River where she uncovers a diabolical twisting plot to end BookWorld.
Once again skewering the hand that feeds him, Jasper Fforde returns to BookWorld with another super First Among Sequels saga. The literature Thursday is an interesting spin of the Realworld Thursday as the literary wannabe heroine sails the Metaphoric only to discover that reading may be fundamental but can prove deadly when Something Rotten is occurring. Fans who enjoy humorous satire will appreciate the return to a realm where lost plots are lethal.
Harriet Klausner
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Overview
The New York Times bestseller and the wildly inventive sixth installment of a series that has more than one million copies (and counting) in print.
Dazzlingly funny and imaginative, Jasper Fforde's books have won him the affection of readers, reviewers, and-dare we say it-booksellers alike. Fans can breathe a sigh of relief because Thursday Next-or at least one of her-is back. At a time of great unrest in the BookWorld, only the ace literary detective can avert a devastating ...