Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
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 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!
Synopsis
The sixth installment in Jasper Fforde’s New York Times bestselling series follows literary detective Thursday Next on another adventure in her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England—from the author of Early RiserDazzlingly 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.
Editorials
Los Angeles Times
“Jam-packed with spot-on parody, puns, and wry observations about words and genres that will delight literary-minded fans of the series.”Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Geeky humor jostles with genuine insight about the current state of fiction.... Take a joy ride with the passionate reader who wrote this novel."Chicago Sun-Times
“There is no denying Fforde’s supersized imagination, linguistic agility, and love of books, Books, BOOKS.”Independent
"Fforde's books are more than just an ingenious idea. They are written with buoyant zest and are tautly plotted. They have empathetic heroes and heroines who nearly make terrible mistakes and suitably dastardly villains who do. They also have more twists and turns than Christie, and are embellished with the rich details of Dickens or Pratchett."Daily Mail
"A riot of puns, in-jokes and literary allusions that Fforde carries off with aplomb."Herald
"Fans of the late Douglas Adams, or, even, Monty Python, will feel at home with Fforde."Publishers Weekly
With the real Thursday Next missing, the "written" Thursday Next leaves her book to undertake an assignment for the Jurisfiction Accident Investigation Department, in Fforde's wild and wacky sixth BookWorld novel (after Thursday Next: First Among Sequels). As written Thursday Next finds herself playing roles intended for her real counterpart, BookWorld's elite try to deal with a border dispute between Racy Novel and Women's Fiction. It's not always possible to know where one is in BookWorld, which has been drastically remade, or in Fforde's book, which shares the madcap makeup of Alice in Wonderland, even borrowing Alice's dodo. Outrageous puns (e.g., a restaurant called Inn Uendo) and clever observations relating to the real book world (e.g., the inhabitants of "Vanity" island now prefer Self-Published or Collaborative) abound. Fforde's diabolical meshing of insight and humor makes a "mimefield" both frightening and funny, while the reader must traverse a volume that's a minefield of unexpected and amusing twists. 10-city author tour. (Mar.)Library Journal
When we last saw intrepid Jurisfiction cop Thursday Next (in Thursday Next: First Among Sequels), she was, once again, kicking butt while saving both the real world and the world of literature. However, just as the BookWorld faces a major geopolitical crisis, Thursday has gone missing. Can her BookWorld equivalent, the written Thursday, find her in time to prevent war among genres? Written Thursday is less than confident as she struggles with snippy coworkers, a substitute who hits the hyphens hard and brings home goblins, relentless and homicidal Men in Plaid, and a foreboding trip up the Metaphoric River. But written Thursday does have a stellar butler, Sprockett, and her likeness to the real Thursday is very useful in the investigation, if confusing to those around her. More concerned with the inner workings of BookWorld than the alterna-England of the real Thursday, this entry gives a backstage view of the world of literature and just what happens to characters when their books aren't being read. VERDICT More metafiction fun from the best-selling Fforde—maybe not the easiest place to join the series, but a must-read for fans. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/10.]—Devon Thomas, DevIndexing, Chelsea, MIKirkus Reviews
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.