Book Review (Fiction): One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing

One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing

Jasper Fforde

Hodder 2011 388 Pages

What if characters in books had a life of their own when no-one was reading the books they inhabited? The marvellously named Jasper Fforde runs (all over the place) with this meta-fictional conceit in the inventively whimsical One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing.

His BookWorld is a meta-textual realm (a vast planet? dimensional plain? or alternative universe?) inhabited by every fictional character ever to appear in print and where competing genres – i.e. Racy Novel and Chick Lit – often overlap and sometimes clash. A potentially cataclysmic all-out genre war is in the offing, and to avert it requires the services of diplomat-detective heroine, the real Thursday Next - who appears have permanently retired to the Real World. Or has she? Her sudden disappearance a week before the peace talks could be for reasons far more sinister...

The written Thursday Next, filling in for the missing heroine in her novel, is hastily recruited to investigate by the Fiction Police, also known as Jurisfiction. Under the guise of being an occasional part-time investigator for the Jurisfiction Accident Investigation Department , written Thursday takes up the trail from Conspiracy via Thriller – and there recruits an unlikely ally, Sprockett, a wind-up clockwork butler with a penchant for creative cocktail combinations!

What follows is too enjoyably convoluted to easily summarise, but the colourful cast of characters (such as Pickwick the Dodo and Mrs Malaprop) and the hilarious exposition of fascinating facets (especially for book nerds) of the BookWorld propel the story nicely onwards.

Fforde is very funny, witty, and playfully tongue-in-cheek. He packs this meta-fictional comedy with plentiful literary puns, allusions and metaphors. He also manages to imaginatively poke fun at various targets that span self-publishing, fan fiction, e-books, etc. And his absurdist parody of Agatha Christie is an absolute hoot that has to be read to be believed!

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