"For readers wanting something different"
Thursday Next has become a fifteen minute legend for
stopping the multinational Goliath Corporation from
extending the Crimean War in order to sell weapons (see The
Eyre Affair). However, fame proves nasty for Thursday
especially following her Monday appearance on the Lush show. However, Thursday has more pressing matters than making TV
appearances (considered heresy for a literary type) because
her archenemy Goliath has deleted her beloved Landon. To
reconstitute Landon, Thursday must first enter the taboo
Poe pages of the Raven. Feeling initially hopeless,
Thursday receives Great Expectations when Miss Havisham
takes her under her wings. Thursday next starts a book-
hopping journey as an obtruding character with more than
just Landon at stake. She struggles LOST IN A GOOD BOOK
with the world in grave danger. Fans of classic literature will either love or hate Jasper
Fforde's latest literary jabbing. The story line is
satirical at its most humorous best as Mr. Fforde leads the
laughs at what is a masterpiece and how society shreds and
re-shreds every line looking for generation nuances to
reinterpret. From the Bard to Kafka to Poe, no work is safe
from the amusing interloping of Jasper Fforde, who makes
his cast especially Thursday fit quite comfortably inside
some of the masterpieces. Readers wanting something
different or a chance to strike back at that English
teacher who nuked literature will say evermore lost in this
great book. Harriet Klausner
Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted March 8, 2003
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If Thursday thought she could avoid the spotlight after her
heroic escapades in the pages of Jane Eyre, she was sorely
mistaken. The unforgettable literary detective whom Michiko
Kakutani of The New York Times calls "part Bridget Jones,
part Nancy Drew and part Dirty Harry" had another think
coming. The love of her life has been eradicated by
Goliath, everyone's favorite corrupt multinational. To
rescue him Thursday must retrieve a supposedly vanquished
enemy from the pages of "The Raven." But Poe is off-limits
to even the most seasoned literary interloper. Enter a
professional: the man-hating Miss Havisham from Dickens's
Great Expectations. As her new apprentice, Thursday keeps
her motives secret as she learns the ropes of Jurisfiction,
where she moonlights as a Prose Resource Operative inside
books. As if jumping into the likes of Kafka, Austen, and
Beatrix Potter's Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies weren't enough,
Thursday finds herself the target of a series of
potentially lethal coincidences, the authenticator of a
newly discovered play by the Bard himself, and the only one
who can prevent an unidentifiable pink sludge from
engulfing all life on Earth. The inventive, exuberant, and totally original literary fun
that began with The Eyre Affair continues with Fforde's
magnificent new adventure, the second installment in what
is sure to become a classic series of literary fantasy.
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