The Well of Lost Plots

My 20 something year old daughter turned my 50 something year old husband on to this series , since then another son and daughter have gotten on the bandwagon . I find it amazing that they are all interested in and enjoy this book , because their personalities are so extremely different , and what they choose to read is usually so different .Must be something to it .

It took me a while to get my mind around the distinctly different use of the English language in this book and its predecessors. The most obvious illustration is the name of the heroine, Thursday Next. You read a line where someone is addressing her by her name, and your brain does a little hiccup, and you have to remind yourself, oh, yes, that's her name, not the day, and then you pick up what was said and get rolling again. But it isn't long until there is another hiccup, and then another, many of them causing a smile, and some an outright giggle. The really funny, as in unusual, thing, though, is that it all works. When I read the book jacket for the first book in this series a couple of years ago (The Eyre Affair), I thought it sounded just too impossibly cute, and I didn't see how an actual plot could be sustained in the midst of all that cleverness. But the reviews were so good that I gave it a try. It did sustain a plot, and pretty well, too. However, Mr. Fforde is getting better with practice, and I think I'm also getting the hang of reading him, and this one is the best yet. So, the motto of all this is: Don't be put off if you think it sounds goofy that a pregnant woman takes some time off and gets away from it all by going to live for a while in a bad novel...after having been tired out by trying to keep up with Miss Havisham, a character from Dickens. You really will like it if you try it!

This is undoubtedly the best book of the Thursday Next series. I found Mr. Ffordes' created world to be believable. I have never laughed out loud so much when reading a book as I have this one. The introduction of ibb and obb, Jack Sprat and getting to know Miss Havisham in more detail are just a few of the fun parts of this book. While it may seem like a tangent in the series, what occurs in this book is important to the storyline of Something Rotten (book #4). My wife just started the Thursday Next series and can't wait to get to this one after watching me read it. Jasper Fforde has an amazing well of creative ideas and there are very few repeats in this book from his others. Sit back and enjoy!

This series of books just seems to get better with every new one published. It just amazes me that the author can come up with the outlandish plots that he has, not to mention the many side characters who come and go at will. It certainly helps to have a good grounding in Literature to get some of the more obscure references (such as a land with many rabbits, where one character says Lennie likes to come on his day off). One of my favorite fictional characters makes a brief appearance in this book: J. Thaddeus Toad of Toad Hall, and that alone was worth the price of the book! I look forward to many more of the adventures of Thursday Next, and may they all be as funny as the ones before!

(Warning: Reading this book without having read the first two is extremely hazardous to mental health!)Thursday Next is back! Hoorah! Being in grave danger from the Hades girl and having been unsuccessful in the recovery of her eradicated husband, she has left the real world (a/k/a the Outland) to spend her gestation period in the Book World. Thanks to her position as Jurisfiction apprentice, she takes advantage of the "character exchange program" to hide out in Caversham Heights (a not-very-good, detective novel that is still under construction in the Well). Thursday mistakenly assumes that this will give her a peaceful year in which to be pregnant, have the child of a man that never existed, and decide just how to get that man's existence back.Jurisfiction (the policing agency of the fiction world) turns out to be much more exciting than anticipated, what with the Pro Catherine faction trying to kill Heathcliff, the Minotaur disappearing and something odd and dangerous going on with the new UltraWord testings--not to mention the everyday adventures of training under Miss Havisham!On top of that, she's billeting two Generics in her home, attempting to defeat a memory thief, studying for her Jurisfiction exam, having morning sickness, presenting the Bookie for "Best Chapter Opening in the English Language" and giving advice to a lady gorilla.Sure, the storyline's a bit unbelievable, there's a lot to keep up with, and I didn't always get the jokes, but all in all The Well of Lost Plots is another gem! Fforde keeps the funnies coming so fast, it's hard to breathe in between them. His Douglas Adams-esq humor, literary jokes and just darn good writing skills make this an A-1 book! But remember, you MUST read The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book before attempting this one. If you ignore this warning, it'll be like reading Macbeth for Yeast* and not at all the pleasant experience it was for me.*"///..//..///// ......///// .../ ./ .......// ..// ..// ./// ...///////"excerpt from Macbeth for Yeast, translated by ..//// ..///..