Lost in a Good Book - Jasper Fforde

Lost in a Good Book

I just love Fforde, he is the strangest author I have read, and his books are a pure delight. This is then the second Thursday Next novel.

It's some months after the end in The Eyre Affair, and Thursday is happily married to Landen. She is now the Medias darling after having given Jane Eyre a happy ending, and everyone wants to know about her. Life seems to be good.

She is still a literary detective, and when a a new Shakespeare play emerges she is sent to investigate. But the big corporation Goliath still has it in for her, Landen disappears when someone mixes with the timeline and actually he died when he was just a little boy. This together with some strange circumstances shows that someone has it in for her. Can she save Landen? Keep Goliath of her track and see to at that the characters in novels behave?


This is an alternate reality novel that takes place in 1985. Wolly mammoths migrate every year through Britain, The Crimean war has just ended with a small village given to The Russian Empire, Time-line guards can jump in time and Thursday's uncle has invented a way to travel into books. She has a pet dodo, and there are also neanderthals after a failed experiment. the taxes on cheese are enormous and literature is big, I mean big. And Thursday is to be put on trial in Kafka's book because of the alternate ending to Jane Eyre.

This is such a strange book, you have to read it to understand, but once you do you are truly sucked into this weird book. Their alternate world is funny, and they sure take literature serious, all forms of literature. The government even has a special branch that looks into crimes with literature, and they also have branches to do with lawns, and vampires and such.

Thursday is a great heroine and I really like her, and I was happy that she ended up with Landen, whom she served with in the Crimean war. But now he sadly died at the age of 2 and no one but her remembers being married to him. Her dad, a renegade Time Agent is always funny to see, not to mention her uncle Mycroft who is this kind of mad scientist in a way. There are a bunch of great side characters that make up the book, and Fforde is sure great at creating them.

He is also great at creating funny and strange stories that seems to make perfect sense in the world were they are taking place.

This is actually the 3rd book I read, I happened to read the 4th book after the 1st, and that worked too. But it is of course much better to read them in the right order cos the story line continues and isn't always resolved. There will always be big bad guys, its not a sweet story where she takes them down in one book and continues on the next bad guy. Now this book needs it's big corporation.

Read them, they are funny and I hope you will like the strangeness in them.