Thursday Next returns in another postmodern literary detective
fantasy from Fforde (The Big Over Easy, 2005, etc.).Once again, the
author creates a world in which only permeable boundaries separate
truth from fiction, the living from the dead (or extinct: Thursday
knits a sweater for her pet dodo, Pickwick). Our heroine revisits
places and people from earlier Fforde novels, as well as from an
immoderate number of English and American classics - one memorable
page contains allusions to The Woman in White, Robert Ludlum, Jason
Bourne, Our Mutual Friend, Bleak House and The Mayor of
Casterbridge. Although the Special Operations Network has nominally
been shut down, in reality Thursday works undercover with Acme
Carpets and on the side runs an underground cheese market,
featuring such tempting morsels as Mynachlog-ddu Old Contemptible,
"kept in a glass jar because it will eat through cardboard or
steel." Thursday embarks on a dizzying set of adventures through
fictive territory. Untoward things have been happening in the
literary world. For example, the natural comedy in Thomas Hardy
novels has mysteriously been removed - Jude the Obscure originally
began as one of the most "rip-roaringly funny novels in the English
Language" - and Thursday travels through space and time to rectify
this situation. Her contemporaries are not as interested in reading
as they are in watching reality TV shows like England's Funniest
Chainsaw Mishaps or Samaritan Kidney Swap. Meanwhile, Thursday has
to deal with Friday, her teenaged lump of a son, whose main goals
in life are sleeping and forming a band called The Gobshites. While
Fforde's humor can be affecting, it can also grate with its
self-consciousness, as the author nudges readers to admire his
verbal dexterity. Vertiginous cleverness here proves to be almost
too much of a good thing. (Kirkus Reviews)
The fifth book in the phenomenally successful Thursday Next series,
from Number One bestselling author Jasper Fforde. 'Ingenious - I'll
watch Jasper Fforde nervously' Terry Pratchett on The Eyre Affair
Fourteen years after she pegged out at 1988 SuperHoop, Thursday
Next is grappling with a recalcitrant new apprentice, the death of
Sherlock Holmes and the inexplicable departure of comedy from the
once-hilarious Thomas Hardy novels. Her idle sixteen-year-old would
rather sleep all day than save the world from imminent destruction,
the government has a dangerously high stupidity surplues, and the
Stiltonista Cheese Mafia are causing trouble for Thursday in her
hometown of Swindon. Then things begin to get bad. As Reality Book
Shows look set to transplant Reality TV Shows and Goliath invent a
trans-fictional tourist coach, Thursday must once again have her
wits about her as she travels to the very limits of acceptable
narrative possibilities to rescue the reading experience from
almost certain destruction . . .
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