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the complete review - fiction

Lost in a Good Book

by
Jasper Fforde

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B+ : good, inventive fun

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "There is a certain self-delighted quality to all this cleverness that would probably become annoying if Fforde weren't so resolutely unclever about his own writing." - Bruno Maddox, The New York Times Book Review
  
  
• "Suspend belief and let yourself be entertained by a witty romp through a fantasy land where it is literally possible to be lost in a good book." - Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph
  
  
• "It would be easy for all this to get too twee for words, if the words weren't Fforde's and he didn't have a head-spinning narrative agility. His novel is satire, fantasy, literary criticism, thriller, whodunit, game, puzzle, joke, postmodern prank and tilt-a-whirl. Okay, maybe Lost in a Good Book is a creature with more than the usual number of feet. But it's exceptionally light on all of them. That said, this is definitely one for the English majors." - Lloyd Rose, The Washington Post

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Lost in a Good Book continues the tale of Thursday Next, a Literary Detective who saved the day (or at least made Jane Eyre what it is today) in The Eyre Affair. It's still 1985, and Thursday is adjusting to married life, trying to teach her pet dodo, Pickwick, to stand on one leg, and trying to avoid some of the publicity stunts the Special Operations Network expect her to partake in.
       The world of the Thursday Next novels is similar to ours, but not quite the same. Long distance travel does not involve airplanes, neanderthals have been reengineered (and are used as cheap labour) -- and, above all, literature really matters. Really matters.
       The dominant entity in this world is the Goliath Corporation -- hard to take serious, but very powerful. Goliath representative Schitt-Hawse wants something from Thursday: the release of Jack Schitt from Poe's 'The Raven' -- and he's not beyond a few dirty tricks, including eradicating her husband (changing the course of time to wipe out all traces of him) in order to blackmail her into doing his bidding. Thursday also has other things to deal with: a lost Shakespearean play, Cardenio, has turned up -- and for once it looks like this is actually an authentic Shakespearean work --, while her time-travelling (and in many ways non-existent father) needs her help in saving the world from destruction (everything on earth is about to turn into a pink, gooey substance). She also eventually joins Jurisfiction, (conveniently) escaping into books and helping police the world's repository of stories and novels.
       It's a convoluted mess of plots: there are time loops and a political power play (using the newly-discovered Shakespeare) and all manner of convenient escapes and coincidences. Still, Lost in a Good Book is a fun romp, the details throughout very enjoyable (and creative). From communication via footnotes to the book-adventures (within and without) it's good literary fun -- as well as simply being adventure of the enjoyable (if entirely fantastical) sort.
       Fforde has a nice touch with the details, an off-beat sort of humour that keeps the reader surprised (and chuckling), suggesting for example:

     "You're the Cheshire Cat, aren't you ?" I asked.
     "I was the Cheshire Cat," he replied with a slightly aggrieved air. "But they moved the county boundaries, so technically speaking I am now the Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat, but it doesn't have the same ring to it."

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Links:

• Penguin publicity page
• Marcos y Marcos publicity page

• Agony Column
• Aphelion
• Blogcritics
• BookLoons
• BookPage
• Books n Bytes
• Curled Up with a Good Book
• Eternal Night
• The Guardian (scroll down for review)
• January Magazine
• Kirkus Reviews
• Large Print Reviews
• Metal-E-Zine
• The New York Times Book Review
• The Onion
• Rambles
• The Romance Reader
• SF Site
• Shitegeist
• Sunday Telegraph (scroll down for review)

• Fforde Grand Central - highly recommended !
• Jasper Fforde at Literature Matters
• Interview at Beatrice

• The Constant Rabbit
• Early Riser
• Nursery Crime-series
  • The Big Over Easy
  • The Fourth Bear
• Shades of Grey-series
  • Red Side Story
• Thursday Next-series
  • The Eyre Affair
  • First Among Sequels
  • One of Our Thursdays Is Missing
  • Something Rotten
  • The Well of Lost Plots
  • The Woman who Died a Lot

• The similarly wild ravings of Steve Aylett
• See Index of Contemporary British fiction at the complete review
• See Index of Mysteries and Thrillers
• See Index of Science Fiction
• See Index of Series and Sequels under review

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About the Author:

       British author Jasper Fforde was born in 1961.

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© 2003-2024 the complete review

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