Lost in a Good Book

Published: July 18th 2002
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton
Pages: 372
Format: Book
Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy
★   ★   ★   ★   ★  – 5 Stars

Thursday Next, literary detective and registered dodo owner begins her married life with the disturbing news that her husband of only a month drowned thirty-eight years ago, and no one but Thursday has any memory of him at all. Someone, somewhere, sometime, is responsible. Could it be the ubiquitous Goliath Corporation, who will stop at nothing to get their operative Jack Schitt out of ‘The Raven’ — the poem in which Thursday trapped him? Or are more sinister forces at work in Swindon?

Having barely caught her breath after The Eyre Affair, Thursday heads back into fiction to search for some answers. Along the way she finds herself helping Miss Havisham close narrative loopholes in Great Expectations, struggling for a deeper understanding of The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies and learning the truth about Larry the Lamb. Paper politicians, lost Shakespearean manuscripts, woolly mammoth migrations, a flurry of near-fatal coincidences and impending Armageddon are all part of a greater plan.

But whose? And why?

Time for another rave about the Thursday Next series. I am very much and a little cross with myself for not reviewing this when I finished it last year because I have lost that feeling and recall of exactly what happens and how I felt. Of course I remember a lot, not all of which I’ll tell you because it spoils the glory, but it is the little things and funny lines that make you laugh. So maybe when one has time for a reread I may find more but for now this will suffice. Lost in a Good Book takes place three months after The Eyre Affair fiasco and Thursday has become a celebrity of sorts, though slightly out of favour with the Bronte Federation, with good reason. Naturally Goliath Corp attempt to censor a lot of Thursday’s story and with a determination to repair the damage Thursday caused at the end of The Eyre Affair, they fight to get back what they want; but this time it’s personal on a whole new level. The consequences of the previous book’s actions are a strong narrative puller, but there is a lot more going on as well.

Issues around Shakespeare return in book two with a discovered lost transcript being investigated. As the best in the business regarding these matters, Thursday and her partner Bowden Cable try and determine if this really is the lost copy of the play Cardenio. This of course is connected to bigger and better things, as everything always is.

Thursday’s father makes another appearance in this book which is always fun. I do like him, you never know what is going to happen when he pops in. It messes with your head as you try to figure out what  is going on, but it is just too fun to be bothered by any of it. The literary world also plays a much larger role in this book than The Eyre Affair. We discover more about the Book World, about the Great Library and we learn about Jurisfiction – the police force of literature (both fiction and non-fiction division).

What was wonderful about this book was not only the range and imagination of this world and the mass of literary knowledge and complex genius that just works (don’t ever question it), but it is also the fact that Fforde can do this with mystery and twists and unexpectedness that can be masterful when you deal with a world as surreal and insane as this. What seems odd to us is normal for them, so when strange things happen to them, you know it is going to be wonderful.

You really get to see that the characters in a book are as real as any of us, and are people who have their own lives to lead. Entering Jane Eyre showed us that but Lost in a Good Book takes it to a whole other level, which isn’t even every level, not even close. Reading about all these books: Shakespeare, Dickens, Kafka, it just makes you want to rush off and read them as well, but you can’t because you can not put down what you are reading.

There are hints and clues through these books as Fforde prepares us for the future and what we need to know. We don’t know it at the time but when we find out something clicks and we realise we already know. It is very much like getting the answer before the question is given, and you don’t even get told which answer goes to which question, but somehow you know.

Once again Fforde uses brilliant literary characters and insight to create yet another fantastic story of surreal but highly believable reality. There are new threats and enemies in this book, revenge, shoes, laughs, and more dodo than you could want (which is never enough). Just simply another great display of this alternate world of theirs, which even without the literature would be just as fantastic. There is more SpecOps, more Daphne Farquitt, lethal coincidences and the oncoming apocalypse, what more do you want? I applaud you Mr Fforde.

Published: July 19th 2001
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton
Pages: 373
Format: Book
Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy
★   ★   ★   ★   ★  – 5 Stars

There is another 1985, where London’s criminal gangs have moved into the lucrative literary market, and Thursday Next is on the trail of the new crime wave’s Mr Big. Acheron Hades has been kidnapping characters from works of fiction and holding them to ransom. Jane Eyre is gone. Missing. 

Thursday sets out to find a way into the book to repair the damage. But solving crimes against literature isn’t easy when you also have to find time to halt the Crimean War, persuade the man you love to marry you, and figure out who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays.

Perhaps today just isn’t going to be Thursday’s day. Join her on a truly breathtaking adventure, and find out for yourself. Fiction will never be the same again…

This has got to be one of the funnest, funniest and greatest books I have read. It is set in an alternative 1985 and literally explores novels and literature in a way I just cannot believe. Jasper Fforde has the ability to delve into the literary world with accuracy and consideration for every possible outcome and explanation. The story follows Thursday Next as she works on solving literary issues that arise in this surreal world of hers, and in her role as
a literary detective she is part of the team that keeps novels on track and when they are interrupted or, as it were, stolen.

In this first adventure Jane Eyre is under threat and Thursday is trying to keep the story uninterrupted while chasing an old enemy through its pages. What was brilliant about this book is that even though I have read Jane Eyre, I spent so much time a little bit confused and trying to trust my own memories while I was being told something different. The fact that Fforde treats these literary characters as real people, very much like actors in a play, it is astounding and fascinating.

But despite the hype, Jane Eyre is not the only aspect of this novel and Fforde uses it to introduce us to this alternative world. There is a lot that is similar to the regular 1985 but there are certainly variations such as cloning, and the dodos, and the time travel being the big ones. It is not even as if the future has arrived early, there is just this ‘what if’ element that makes it a little science fictiony about ‘well what if the Crimean War was entering its one hundred and thirty-first year’, and ‘what if there was this agency that made sure all the literary characters behaved themselves and stopped Hamlet from chucking tantrums’. You know, little things like that.

When I read books of these nature a small but demanding part of me wishes that these things could really happen. There are enough quotes floating about from decades past and present that speak about how characters come alive in the reading but what this is, this was brilliant, I don’t know how many more ways I could say it. The quotes that can come out of this book alone are funny and clever and manage to suit all sorts of situations. Also, and I think this is terribly unfair of Fforde, is that with all these mentions of Shakespeare and oh, Great Expectations, you spend most of the time reading about Thursday and the other part thinking ‘oh I really want to read Great Expectations now’. So I offer one hearty angry fist shake at Mr Fforde for adding more books to my growing pile, and with the other shake his hand for showing me that stories can be whatever it is you want them to be and just let your mind write whatever bizarre things it thinks of- within reason of course…this is how bad literature is written. So if the idea of exploring classic and wonderful novels from absolutely new and exciting angles doesn’t get you in, then time travel, dodos, funny character names and the idea of being stuck in a Wordsworth poem should be enough to entice anybody to at least have a look. From the first few chapters I knew I would adore this series and certainly by the end of the book I wished upon all my wishes that we too could own Dodos.