Lost the Plot
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There is something ironic in the title of Jasper Fforde's third Thursday Next novel, `The WELL of LOST PLOTS' that I think might be unintentional.
To loose the plot of something is to go a little crazy to be totally out of touch - I'm not suggesting Mr. Fforde has gone that far, but the plotting of the story does suggest a little desperation and there are a couple of details that add to an inconsistency that is not comfortable for the reader.
Prime is the fact that when characters `die' in this book, they are replaced by a look-alike, act-alike 'generic' - which makes a complete nonsense out of the first book (The Eyre Affair ) in the series where events revolved about the kidnapping and threat of death to the character Jane Eyre. If Jane could simply have been `replaced' what was all the fuss about?
For anyone reading this who is not familiar with the Fforde series, Thursday Next is a detective in a parallel world where the Crimean War hadn't ended, where airships cross the sky and where you can enter books, if you have the know how, and hide from the big bad company trying to control the world whilst you have a baby and try to bring back you husband who has been unexisted from everyone's memory - except for your own and your nutty granny.
It's fantasy and funny combined with detective and is full of one liners and gentle literary references.
Which points to another problem I have with the book - once was funny, twice was amusing, thrice is getting obvious - the `into a book and reacting with characters' is no longer smart, just tiresomely familiar - and Mr. Fforde hasn't done enough to rescue the situation.
There was one point I thought he'd done it - he brought in Nemo, and things started to look up but then wasted the character.
A final moan is there is no development of character - no one really seems to change - even the `generic' turning into a character had an oddness about it which meant they never really changed.
Both of the previous books in the series I devoured, this one took time to read. I felt a `so-what' several times as I did read and had that feeling in my mouth at the end (the one where you try to eat slightly under cooked, unsalted, un-vinegared chips) which made me want to send it back and ask for a fully cooked version.
I shall try the next in the series, but Mr Fforde's reputation is on the line.
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Recommended
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I really enjoyed TWOLP but not as much as the first two books in the series.However, I can't wait to read the next installment.
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Not as good as the first two Thursday Next novels, but still a corker....
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I would still recommend TWOLP as it is still a highly original and entertaining read.
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The Write Stuff
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As previously encountered in Jasper Fforde's first two installments in the Next series (THE EYRE AFFAIR and LOST IN A GOOD BOOK), the real world "now" is England of 1985, where dodo birds are kept as pets, a special police unit drives stakes through vampires' hearts, Tunbridge Wells has been ceded 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. The heroine of the series 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. By the end of LOST IN A GOOD BOOK, Next, pursued by the evil mega-corporation Goliath, temporarily flees into BookWorld, a sort of parallel universe where the volumes that humans read in the "now" are created. There, she volunteers for Jurisfiction, a policing agency that labors literally inside fictional works to keep plots, grammar and characters from spinning out of control. If you loved Alice's Wonderland, you'll be entranced by BookWorld.
THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS evolves almost entirely within BookWorld and within books themselves, which can be entered by Jurisfiction agents pretty much as the characters in the film MARY POPPINS popped in and out of chalk pavement pictures. Bookworld is an enthralling achievement of the author's imagination, but is too complex a place to describe fully in any brief synopsis. A few descriptive snapshots must suffice:
1. Literary characters become flesh and blood in BookWorld, e.g., Miss Havisham of GREAT EXPECTATIONS, who acts as Thursday's mentor and, at one point, is assigned the duty of chairing the ongoing rage-counseling sessions for the characters of WUTHERING HEIGHTS.
2. The HQ of Jurisfiction is the unused ballroom of Norland Park, the Dashwood house in SENSE AND SENSIBILITY.
3. The characters (Humpty Dumpty, Little Bo-peep, the Butcher, Baker & Candlestick Maker, the Three Blind Mice, etc.) of Oral Traditions, i.e. nursery rhymes, have unionized and are threatening a 48-hour strike.
4. A book is constructed by artisans - wordsmiths, holesmiths, echolocators - and many of its component parts - plot devices, chapter endings, back(ground)stories, descriptive devices for marking time's passage - are available from vendors. Conversely, other life forms- grammasites, bookworms, mispeling vyruses, punctusauroids, scene stealers, PageRunners, inside traders - disrupt plot and grammar cohesion and are the quarry of Jurisfiction.
5. The twenty-six above-ground floors of the Great Library contain all books ever published; the twenty-six below-ground levels of THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS store all still in progress or the ones completed but never published.
6. A Storycode Engine is the imaginotransference machine that transmits books in the Great Library to its readers in Outland.
This novel incorporates both a murder mystery and its underlying grand conspiracy, but you, the reader, will be so absorbed in the marvelously imaginative construct of BookWorld that you may not notice until the story's final third. And by the conclusion, you'll agree with the Great Panjandrum who observes that Thursday Next "has The Write Stuff".
Fforde, via story elements and his characters' dialogue, doesn't pass up the opportunity to take a few mild swipes at the current state of literary fiction, which is bedeviled by recycled plots and the rarity of One Original Idea. Perhaps, with the Next series, Jasper shows us what's possible.
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Just When I Thought It Couldn't Get Any Better...
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Before I get into this I will concur with a fellow reviewer on one point; this book is best read if you have read the previous two books in the Thursday Next series, there are many facets to The Well of Lost Plots that may seem slightly alien if taken in isolation, where I will disagree with the same reviewer though is that even if you read this as stand alone it is still a fantastic book.
So we begin. Thursday has decided to seek refuge in The Well as a way of escaping (amongst other things) The Goliath Corporation and as a way of protecting her unborn child whilst at the same time trying to think of a way to bring back her eradicated husband (Landon) from, well I am not really sure what you bring an eradicated man back "from" but wherever it is she is trying to manage it. On top of this workload (see women can have it all) she is living the life of a character in a particularly poor detective novel (Caversham Heights) as one of the stories main characters Mary (part of the Character Exchange Programme).
Thursday is also a fledgling trainee officer for Jurisfiction - the book worlds police force - and is apprentice to the inimitable Miss Haversham from Dickens' Great Expectations - I lively character to be sure! Whilst in this tranquil oasis Thursday is drawn into a conspiracy that could only have been cooked up in The Well (it involves a Minotaur, a Vyrus - spelt this way, a new book operating system and humpty dumpty...).
I once read that Stephen King wouldn't let his own children read his novels for fear of disturbing them with that vast (and possible disturbing) imagination of his and I sometimes wonder whether Jasper Fforde should be allowed to be read by prospective authors for fear of having covered ever last original idea that can be imagined, or maybe it's the reverse to show prospective authors what can be done but whichever it is I can say with some confidence that this is the most imaginative, most well written and most absorbing series of books that I have read in many years. Not only is the story developing at an incredible rate but the development of the characters is being handled sublimely and the tracks are being laid for the future novels, rather than having them as bolt on plots and threads.
Overall this is comfortable a 5 star book, not a grade I give out often but in this instance, one that is truly deserved.
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