Review: One of Our Thursdays is Missing

I recently finished the final three books in Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series: Something Rotten, First Among Sequels and One of Our Thursdays is Missing. Fans of the series will have read these already, most likely when they originally came out. The latest installment, One of Our Thursdays is Missing, came out in 2011, and so I will focus my review on this particular book. First, a quick recap: we were first introduced to Literary Detective Thursday Next in The Eyre Affair, in which her attempt to stop a book thief and murderer takes her into Jane Eyre and the resulting action causes a change in the novel’s plot (the ending is much better now). Lost in a Good Book was the second book, followed by The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, and First Among Sequels. In each novel, Fforde expands on the idea of BookWorld, which posits that fictional characters are real entities whose jobs are to portray characters in novels as they are being read. It is a fascinating world, and Fforde does well to maintain his metaphor throughout.

In One of Our Thursdays is Missing, the narrative conceit is changed slightly. Thursday Next’s adventures have become so well known that a series of novels were written about her, giving birth to the fictional Thursday. Fforde goes to several levels of metafiction here, as the first five books in the fictional Thursday Next series have the same titles as the actual books; Fforde goes so far as to reveal the truth behind a major character's actual name, as it was changed for the fictional version.

The novel is told by the written Thursday, who must solve a BookWorld mystery of espionage and corruption, as well as find the real Thursday, who seems to be missing. Fforde expands on the conceit of BookWorld, giving metaphor, malapropism, tropes, etc, tangible properties. It works as a device and he keeps it interesting, especially during the token River Boat trip with cliche characters.

The story is exciting as always, and while it is not exactly a crime novel, it works well as detective fiction. Thursday is an excellent character, and Fforde explores the idea of the self through a fictional representation of his staple character. The book follows a predictable narrative arc, yet it is anything but predictable.

However, I felt as though there was an opportunity to dig deeper into the era of ebooks and ereading. For instance, Fforde has an opportunity to explore the definitions of "text" and "book", as well as the evolution of authors, publishers and readers. It is addressed peripherally, but not nearly enough. It is enough of a sea change in publishing and reading technology that it felt like the white elephant in the room while I was reading it. Of course, I was reading it on an ereader, so that may have influenced my opinion. Perhaps the next Thursday Next book will tackle this topic in more detail.

Overall, the six books of the Thursday Next series are excellent: fun, thought-provoking, intelligent and well-written. Highly recommended - four wise-cracking dodos out of five.

Review: The Eyre Affair

The Erye Affair is a refreshing read, clever in its premise and well done to be pulled off at all. Fforde immediately demands that you suspend your disbelief by informing the reader that the Crimean War (1853-1856) was actually still ongoing, as the Treaty of Paris was never signed. And so the reader immediate realizes that British history needs a quick review (thank you Wikipedia). We follow heroine Thursday Next in her pursuit of literary criminals, in her profession as literary detective (“LiteraTecs”), investigating crimes against literature: “It’s way less flash than it sounds... It was under Boswell that we arrested the gang who were stealing and selling Samuel Johnson first editions; on another occasion we uncovered an attempt to authenticate a flagrantly unrealistic version of Shakespeare’s Cardenio. Fun while it lasted, but only small islands of excitement among the ocean of day-to-day mundanities that is SO-27: we spent most of our time dealing with illegal traders, copyright infringements and fraud”

Fforde’s London is a literary society, with classic literature and its authors holding high value in all parts of society. Thursday Next deals with the criminal element, and she meets an arch-villain appropriately named Acheron Hades (his brother’s name is, you guessed it, Styx). Hades is a worthy foe, and the two meet numerous times as she seeks to foil his plots to subvert society by abducting first editions and altering key events in literature. And he does it all for fun. The Eyre affair refers to one such attempt to alter literature, and Fforde deftly navigates the complicated details of the world he created in order to pull it off.

The Eyre Affair is an amusing and satisfying read, and is perfect for summer. You can escape into literature while Thursday may or may not be literally doing the same thing. Five stars!

Still Reading!

I've finished A Storm of Swords, and have started A Feast for Crows. Storm is utterly heartbreaking at times, and I am yanked back to reality when Martin exhibits his superior storytelling skills by making it all so real, even though we're talking about dragons, wights, direwolves and giants. Brilliant. I can only hope A Feast for Crows lives up to its predecessors.

A fellow fan of the series recommended that I wait until shortly before the fifth book is released before I read the fourth book, as the timelines occur simultaneously, so I am putting AFfC on hiatus and jumping to The Eyre Affair, which I am loving. It is a marriage between Douglas Adams and Harold Bloom, so far. More to report once Fforde is ffinished.

June's Pick: The Eyre Affair

The Book Club pick for June 2011, celebrating 3 years of book clubbing, will be a “bookish” book, The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde:

"The novel is set in a very different reality, where literature is a very serious matter. Thursday Next is a Special Operative, who investigates literary fraud and forgeries. She's called in when a rare Dickens manuscript disappears without a trace. Then, she finds herself caught up in a literary detective tale, where she must unravel the puzzle of literary time travel and the re-writing of the the most famous endings." (thanks About.com)

Read more here. 

Perhaps my wife will even respond, as she has read this book and I know for a fact that she enjoyed it.