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Title: The Well of Lost Plots: A Thursday Next Novel by Jasper Fforde ISBN: 0-670-03289-1 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 19 February, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.17 (6 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The most amusing yet
Comment: Each volume of this series is more amusing than its predecessors, and this is the best yet. Thursday Next, literary detective, is living in the manuscript of an unpublished detective novel, Caversham Heights. She becomes involved in the desperate efforts of the characters to make the book more interesting and therefore publishable, and to prevent themselves being (horror of horros) reduced to text. At the same time she is being tormented by the evil sister of her deceased archenemy Acheron Hades, who is trying to wipe out her memories. The funniest part of the book is when she is in Wuthering Heights, where the characters are beseiged by a group of outraged young Cathy supporters, determined to kill Heathcliff(an excellent idea, in my opinion). The most puzzling part of the book is where we learn that David Copperifled has murdered his first wife. Why on earth would he want to do that? She was fun, if he'd wanted to murder his dreary second wife it would make more sense. As the late Dilys Powell once said 'Every time Agnes Wickfield opens her mouth I want to slap her'Thursday's adventures are immensely enjoyable to read, except when she starts moping over her boring dissapeared husband (how I wish the tiresome man had been killed in the Crimea). The books would be more fun if Thursday was single,but they are fun anyway.
Rating: 4
Summary: The Most Original Series Around
Comment: Thursday Next is at it again in another book hopping adventure. Now Aornis Hades, the sister of Achernon, emerges as the evil villain. And what a wonderful villain she is. Here we have a pregnant Thursday taking a break from her job at SpecOps as a literary detective to go to the Well of Lost Plots by joining the Jurisfiction Character Exchange Program (similar to a student exchange program) for a little rest and relaxation, but alas, there is no rest for our Thursday. She finds herself in many battles with Miss Haversham of Dicken's Great Expectations fame by her side.
If you like fun books, with a sense of humor that don't take themselves too seriously, that are as satirical as they are silly, then this is a book for you. You need to be willing to suspend disbelief and enter another world, just enough different enough from ours to make it truly special. But I must say I loved this book as much as I loved the other two - which is five stars worth.
If you loved Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book, you'll love the Well of Lost Plots. If you haven't read those, then I would start at the beginning of the series with Eyre Affair.
Rating: 3
Summary: Next!
Comment: Nextian devotees undoubtedly appreciate Jasper Fforde's playful use of the English language; leave it to a Brit to give us a good linguistic chuckle. The Well of Lost Plots is no different in this regard and is, perhaps, a device used even more so in Book Three. The word play that provides much of the novel's banter is quite clever (note how many times Fforde gets away with using the word "that" consecutively in a single sentence), and the author's choice of characters and plot devices exposes his devotion to stodgy British literature as delightfully campy (even if you hated Anna Karenina the first time around, it may appeal when the reader gets to eavesdrop on the story, recounted as a phone conversation rife with gossip, pushed into the margins of the novel's footnotes). Alas, so much of the book is clever that the story never gets beyond its own wit. The sharp tongue of the story's heroine (and the sharp wit of its author) have iced us a rich cake in the first two novels, wheras all we're left with this time around is the icing.
As such, the third installment of the Thursday Next series does not measure up to its predecessors. Of course, any fan of the Fforde series will want to read this Next story (pun intended), but there is an unfortunate and unintended irony to the title in that the story is itself a lost plot. The world-not-unlike-our-own circa 1985 that Fforde has been painting for us made The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book novels that readers would devour with all the voracity of the latest Harry Potter, whereas The Well of Lost Plots abandons said world for that of Jurisfiction and the meta-realities of the written word. While Jurisfiction provided the backdrop for much of the story's wit up until now, it is the primary setting of Thursday's adventures here and readers may find themselves sorely missing Thursday's Swindon - the one populated with genetically re-issued species and airships and Rocky Horror-esque productions of Richard III. Instead we are lamming it with Thursday as she explores a crossroads of fiction, primarily British, in which characters are mysteriously dying. Characters, I might add, that are simply re-created upon their deaths (not quite like their former selves, but the possibility of replacement certainly diminishes the stakes inherent within the very basic instinct of survival). The rules of this new environment aren't terribly clear and the motives of its inhabitants confusing if not absent (they are, after all, fictional characters and seem to have a kind of reprogrammed id).
Again, fans won't want to miss this one, and if you've read this far you may as well press on (the promise of returning to Thursday's old life in which she clashes with Goliath, that corporate monstrosity we love to hate, holds for future novels), but don't expect the calibur of previous installments. Rather, enjoy this for what it is: clever.
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Title: Lost in a Good Book: A Thursday Next Novel by Jasper Fforde ISBN: 0670031909 Publisher: Penguin USA Pub. Date: 31 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Eyre Affair: A Novel by Jasper Fforde ISBN: 0142001805 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 25 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Game by LAURIE R. KING ISBN: 0553801945 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 02 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer ISBN: 0374128715 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 01 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: The Time Traveler's Wife (Today Show Book Club #15) by Audrey Niffenegger ISBN: 1931561648 Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing Pub. Date: 17 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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