An unusually sure-footed first novel, this literary folly serves up
a generally unique stew of fantasy, science fiction, procedural,
and cozy literary mystery-but in the end is more dancing bear than
ballet. In an alternative Britain where literature is as important
to the masses as movie stars are in our own, kids trade bubble-gum
cards of Fielding characters, Baconians go door to door like
Jehovah's Witnesses preaching Francis Bacon's authorship of
Shakespeare (while radical "New Marlovians" firebomb their
meetings), and Richard III is weekly participatory theater, like
The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Thursday Next, a veteran of the
Crimean War (still being fought after a hundred years), is a
LiteraTec, assigned to crimes such as stolen manuscripts and,
because time travel is common, very convincing forgeries. Her
father, a renegade ChronoGuard, travels time fighting historical
revisionists, occasionally visiting Thursday to check his progress
("Have you ever heard of someone named Winston Churchill?").
Acheron Hades, whose supernatural powers make him the third most
dangerous man in the world, steals the Prose Portal, an invention
allowing travel between literature and reality, and the original
manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit, then ransoms one of the minor
characters. Things get worse when he gets his hands on Jane Eyre.
Thursday pursues Acheron into the text of the novel (always a
puzzlement to Bronte fans because of its oddly truncated close, in
which Jane never returns to Rochester), defeats him, and gives the
story its familiar happy ending. Back in her own world, Thursday
marries her true love in scenes that parallel the novel she's just
escaped, aided by characters she'd thought she'd left there. While
endlessly inventive, the invention here displays more whim than
whimsy (names like Jack Schitt, Millon de Floss, and Oswald Mandias
get a grin, but no more), and the world this young Welsh newcomer
creates lacks the integrity that makes the best fantasies both
startling and enduring. Still, it's a welcoming and amusing place
to pass a few hours. (Kirkus Reviews)
The first book in the phenomenally successful Thursday Next series,
from Number One bestselling author Jasper Fforde. 'Always
ridiculous, often hilarious ... blink and you miss a vital
narrative leap. There are shades of Douglas Adams, Lewis Carroll,
'Clockwork Orange' and '1984'. And that's just for starters' - Time
Out Meet Thursday Next, literary detective without equal, fear or
boyfriend. 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 certain 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 ...
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