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Lost in a Good Book by: Jasper Fforde

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Rating: - Lost in a Good Book - I was!!

I got the first two books in the Thrsday Next series through a special deal from a mail-order book company and was soon hooked.
As I travel to work everyday on the bus for an hour or so, these books were the ideal read - not too heavy and just enough humour to pass the time. I finished the first two in about a week and went straight out and bought the other two in the series.
Lost in a good book is all about plucky Literary detective Thursday Next, her dodo Pickwick and the literary characters she meets whilst "book-jumping" a feat that only a select few "outlanders" (real, not fictional people) can do.
Thursday has to juggle her family life, her mother, her job, her book job in the literary world and everything else that life throws at her, and she does it all with a pinch of humour and a very readbale story. It was the sort of book that you just can't put down and want to keep reading......

Rating: - A Disappointing Mess

I picked up the first book in this series (The Eyre Affair) based purely on its premise and was left somewhat underwhelmed. Still, the potential for the series seemed so large that I went ahead and read this second one too, only to be even less enchanted with the franchise. This is a pure sequel, and any newcomers are advised to read the misadventures of Thursday Next is strict order, lest one miss out of allusions to past events. Although... on further consideration, maybe it doesn't matter, since clearly anything can and will happen in this series, and Fforde isn't all that interested in keeping to a linear plotline anyway.

The setting is the same as the first book, an alternate mid-1980s England in which literature is the preeminent social preoccupation. Fresh off the events of "The Eyre Affair", Thursday Next (a police officer specializing in literature related crimes, such as first-edition forgeries, valuable manuscript thefts, and the like) is gritting her teeth through a new round of fame as the woman who saved Jane Eyre (and changed the ending for the better), when all she wants to do is cuddle up at home with her new husband Landen. Unfortunately, the evil Goliath Corporation has managed to use a corrupt member of the Chronogaurd (timestream police) to delete Landen from this timeline and are holding his existence hostage. In the first book Thursday imprisoned one of their top men inside Poe's "The Raven", and it seems they want him back.

This a potentially interesting plot, but it keeps get lost amidst all the other things Fforde throws into the mix. Most notable are a series of strange coincidences which keep coming close to killing Thursday (and are also linked to events in the first book). Another plotline concerns the discovery of a "lost" Shakespeare play, which looks to be the most important literary event of the century, if Thursday can authenticate it. There's also the small matter of Thursday's pregnancy. And just when one is comfortable with Thursday's role as a "SpecOps Litratech", and that whole milieu, she's thrown into an entirely new one as a member of "Jurisfiction", a kind of police comprised of book characters who move around in different literary works and maintain order... Finally, her father pops up to inform her that something in the timestream has gone wrong and the entire world is going to be turned into a mass of pink sludge in a few days unless he can figure it out, and can she help him. Phew!

I've probably missed one or two elements, but you get the idea. Fforde is just brimming with nifty ideas, but the shame of it is that he can't stop and give any of them the attention they deserve. It's impossible to get invested in any of the plotlines when you know he's just going to move on to something else in a few pages, and it's impossible to care about the characters when their existence is utterly malleable, as is time and place. I suppose it's all meant to be puckish good fun, but the overall effect is more an attention deficit disorder Nancy Drew heroine meets a poor-man's Douglas Adams. The book has its occasional moments, but the humor is far too broad and unsubtle, and there's absolutely no narrative tension. All the literary in jokes in the world can't save this shambling wreck, and I don't think I'll be moving on to the next book.

Rating: - From dubiosity to admiration

LOST IN A GOOD BOOK may be a painful rite of passage for a linear thinker.

Here, in author Jasper Fforde's England of 1985, people keep dodo birds as pets, a special police unit drives stakes through vampires' hearts, Tunbridge Wells has been given over to Russia in war reparations, London to Sydney travel time is 40 minutes by Gravitube through the Earth's center, air travel is by lighter-than-air airship, cheese is contraband, there's a duty on custard, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis has been recreated from recovered DNA and now provides society with its minimum-wage untermenschen, time travel is a reality, and 249 wooly mammoths in nine herds migrate back and forth across Britain.

So little of this parallel universe makes sense that I at first doubted my ability to finish the book. But, intrepidly, I carried on.

The heroine of the story is Thursday Next, a Literary Detective in department 27 of SpecOps, the national law enforcement megaforce. The mission of SO-27, among other things, is to validate the authenticity of recently discovered works by dead authors. The title of the book refers to the ability of certain trained adepts to physically enter book plots in real time, much as Mary Poppins and her young charges were able to pop in and out of chalk pavement pictures in the film MARY POPPINS. This talent is so rare that, here, Next is coerced by a representative by the world's monolithic business corporation, Goliath, to rescue his unsavory half-brother previously marooned by Thursday within the pages of Poe's "The Raven" in the first book of the Next series, THE EYRE AFFAIR. In return, Goliath will restore Thursday's husband Landen, who has been eradicated. And, as if that wasn't enough of a bother, Thursday must also thwart the imminent destruction of all Life on Earth by strawberry flavored Dream Topping.

Perhaps you can see where a linear thinker might suffer a migraine.

The enjoyment of becoming lost in LOST IN A GOOD BOOK isn't related to a nail-biter plot because what plot it possesses isn't; the word "peripeteia" comes to mind. Rather, the joy comes from the expectation of reading what clever quirkiness the frisky imagination of Fforde cranks out - sort of a present-day version of ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Indeed, the Cheshire Cat is one of the book's characters. It's that imagination that compels me to award the novel five stars though it goes against my grain.

I'm not particularly driven to read THE EYRE AFFAIR, but I have ordered the next in the series, THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS. It will undoubtedly spend time in the waiting room with the twenty-some more linear works awaiting my attention until I get the urge to lose myself in a bit of benign madness.

Rating: - An imagination to rival a 3 year old

Take 2 for Thursday Next in Lost In A Good Book sees her starting in a happy place, Acheron Hades is gone – presumed pretty dead – and Thursday is married to her precious Landen. What's more she has skilfully left Jack Schitt abandoned in Poe’s “The Raven” – life is good.

Well, good I guess is relative…

Whilst appearing on the Adrian Lush show (by the sounds of it an other world Terry Wogan) she comes across Mr Schitt-Hawse, also a Goliath employee and the half brother of Jack. Now Mr SH is adamant that he wants Jack back to ensure that he serves justice for his crimes. Now Thursday’s views of anyone that works for Goliath are not the best but with anyone with any resemblance to the surname “Schitt” goes right to the bottom of the pile in terms of trust – the kinda guy that when you shake hands you count your fingers afterwards to make sure they are still there…

Thursday, however has more pressing problems. Landen has been eradicated, not murdered (although some including Emma Hamilton, nee Lady Nelson, would rather it be referred to that way) but eradicated. To the lay man this means going back in time to some indiscriminate moment and altering the future to ensure you don't exist – in this case knocking on a certain set of parents bedroom door at an inopportune moment…

Coupled with this Thursday has been informed by her renegade Chronoguard father that the world is going to end, in fact it is going to be turned into a pink gooey substance, but ended all the same. Can she stop the end of the world, rescue Landen and look after Pickwick and her new arrival?

Jasper Fforde has the most vivid imagination I have ever come across and the settings he creates are nothing short of miraculous. The way he can make you comprehend the oddity that are his settings is the true genius of the book; I mean to illustrate, try to imagine that you are able to jump into books and meet characters, now try and explain that to a family member in a way where they can completely follow what you are saying – not easy I imagine!

I don't believe you have to have read The Eyre Affair to read this but I would recommend it in the strongest way as it does aid your enjoyment and you will be able to see how the author has grown from that book to this. A strong recommendation for anyone that can suspend belief, even if only for a short while.

Rating: - Brilliant!

As some other rewievers, I picked up this book by accident - in my case, because i liked the cover. As an introduction to the Nextian universe, it was absolutely mind-boggling, but also strangely enjoyable. Not understanding anything for 200 pages is normally not that interesting, but in this case it was more than okay.

I have since read every other book by Jasper Fforde, and am eagerly awaiting TN5! I strongly recommend this to anyone who like genre limits to be challenged.

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