Customer Reviews

One of Our Thursdays Is Missing: A Novel

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Way back in 2001, buzz rippled through the American publishing industry for a British debut novel, The Eyre Affair. It was this country's introduction to two unlikely-named characters: Jasper Fforde and Thursday Next. We've had a decade to get to know them now, and they haven't worn out their welcome yet. On the contrary, Fforde ffanatics long for Thursday's return, as she has not made an appearance since 2007's First Among Sequels.

One of Our Thursdays is Missing is Fforde's sixth novel in the series. There is always danger of a continuing series growing stale, but Fforde manages to keep things fresh in a variety of ways. First, he rotates the Next novels with those in two other series. Also, there was a bit of a paradigm shift in the last book, as Fforde moved the action of the story ahead by 14 years. Our heroine was suddenly in a very different place in her life.

Now, she's just in a different place period, and nobody seems to know where she is. Per the title, one of our Thursdays is missing. However, that leaves one remaining. The fictional Thursday has noted her counterpart's absence, even if no one will own up to it. She's on the case--which is just as well. Things are getting somewhat contentious in her book.

This volume, for the first time, delves into the real nitty-gritty of what it is to be read day in and day out. We get a lot of new information about the BookWorld, in part because there's new info to be had. Fforde recreates his creation in the opening chapter. It's fiction; he can do that. Also new is Sprockett. As literary characters go, this mechanical manservant falls somewhere in the intersection of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves, Matt Ruff's electric negroes, and Paolo Bacigalupi's Windup Girl. He's a welcome addition to the series.

While Fforde has added several new elements this time around, other familiar aspects are absent. This novel takes place almost entirely in the BookWorld. I quite missed the cast of RealWorld (or Outland) characters, but as I became more engaged in the story being told, I missed what was left out less. The Next books are beloved for their unique and affectionate brand of literary satire. That's very much in evidence here. In addition to lampooning the classics, there are plenty of playful references to Fforde's contemporary peers. But on top of that, it's not a half-bad mystery plot that Mr. Fforde has penned.

The one thing we can count on from any Fforde offering is the author's trademark wit and humor. His idiosyncratic cleverness is abundantly on display, so I'll leave the last words to him:

"Budgetary overruns almost buried the remaking before the planning stage, until relief came from an unexpected quarter. A spate of dodgy accounting practices in the Outland necessitated a new genre in Fiction: Creative Accountancy. Shunned by many as `not a proper genre at all,' the members' skills at turning thin air into billion-dollar profits were suddenly of huge use, and the remaking went ahead as planned. Enron may have been a pit of vipers in the Outland, but they quite literally saved the BookWorld.

Bradshaw's BookWorld Companion (16th edition)"

I absolutely LOVE the Thursday Next series, and was super excited to receive this latest installation in the mail last week. Unfortunately, I was disappointed, as I have been with most of Jasper's recent books. First of all, the book isn't about the <real> Thursday, it's about the <written> Thursday, who, as you will recall from First Among Sequels, is a total wet blanket. Second, the story is filled with so much background information about the BookWorld that, for readers who have already read the first five Thursday Next books, is less than exciting. Lastly, and this is the main reason why I am only giving three stars to the book--the plot does not pick up until over 200 pages into the novel.

As always with Fforde, the writing is fun, the BookWorld is amusing, and the randomness of the characters always keeps you on your toes. But as an avid Thursday fan who wanted more THURSDAY, I was let down.

Wow, yet another spin on the Nextian universe, refreshing different from the last couple of books. Jasper Fforde amazes me with his constant changes and point-of-views.

Felt a little lighter in plot that others in the series, but this was offset by the wonderfully witty and reinvented BookWorld. Almost like a series reboot!

I am constantly amazed at the wordplays and use of language. A bonus on reading this on my Kindle was being able to use the built-in dictionary to look up all the new (real) words sprinkled through the story!

Jasper Fforde may be the best user of the English language writing today. He is witty, articulate, and knowledgeable. He mines metaphors and establishes characters as well as anyone. He may be the best satirist and social commentator since Swift, and that's a long time. But not even Swift could hit it for six every time, and with One of Our Thursday's is Missing Fforde is out for a duck, bowled lbw. (For Americans, that's "home run" and "out on three consecutive called strikes.")

I usually read a Thursday Next novel in a couple of evenings; when I took The Big Over Easy (the Nursery Crime series) on a trip to San Francisco a few years ago, I almost asked the pilot to go around a few more times, so I could finish the book; I read Shades of Grey cover to cover in a day. I'm sorry to report that it took me a week to read One of Our Thursdays is Missing, the latest offering in the Thursday Next series; I could put it down.

The plot of One of Our Thursdays is convoluted, even by Fforde's standards. I get the Book World, I even get why the written Thursday had to visit the Outland (Real World). But to gratuitiously reintroduce Mycroft without giving one of his greatest supporting characters so much as a line of dialogue seems unfair. Do you know who the Bellman is? Don't expect any help figuring him out here; you'll have to go back to Lost in a Good Book. Don't remember the greatest villain ever, Jack Schitt? (The Hades siblings have redeeming virtues, like senses of humor; Schitt is just 200 proof evil.) You won't be told that Thursday marooned him in The Raven, but that accounts for the animosity between them. As well as minor characters from previous books who have become major characters here and major characters from previous books who have become minor characters here is also a full cast of new major and minor players are so many minor characters in One of Our Thursdays, so many that you need a map to keep track of them. When I read The Eyre Affair I hadn't read Jane Eyre in over forty years, yet I could make sense out of it. In One of Our Thursdays there are repeated references to previous books, but if you haven't read those you have no chance of understanding; I had to dredge up a plot summary of First Among Sequels just to figure out what was going on in this book, the next in the series. But even then it was confusing. The ongoing in joke, is the written Thursday the real Thursday or not, wears very thin by the end, and even then we just leave Thursday (real, not written) dropped off at Grey's Anatomy (how did we get there? That certainly isn't in the fiction genre).

In fact, the ending is very unsatisfactory. Nothing is pulled together, there are too many lose ends and ambiguous characters left. Sure, that's happened in other novels in the series: Jack Schitt, Aenais Hades, to say nothing of the whole supporting caste. But this is different: Red Herring is unaccounted for, is Senator Jobsworth a good guy or a bad guy, does the written Thursday get her role back and if she doesn't what happens to her, does Sprocket go to Jobsworth or back to Vanity or stay with the written Thursday ...? And, speaking of Sprocky, he reminds me a little too much of C3PO.

All in all, I found One of Our Thursdays is Missing to be dissatisfying. I'm still a Fforde fan, and I'm looking forward to the next colo(u)r novel. But if you haven't bought One of Our Thursdays, wait for the paperback.

A major subplot within this book deals with the "remaking" of Bookworld, into something geographical. Sadly, I can't help but feel that the reason for this is that Fforde's imagination has run up against the limits of Bookworld as he originally envisioned it. Or rather, that Bookworld as originally envisioned has run up against the limits of Fforde's imagination. Which is sad, because the bookjumping and footnoterphoning were some of the most creative and enjoyable aspects of the series, and each novel seemed to find some new way of answering seemingly ordinary questions with extraordinary (but logical) solutions. To replace them with taxis that attach themselves to books moving locations, for instance, is...uninspiring.

As, sadly, is most of this book. The plot's twists and turns aren't terribly twisty, and while one subplot does certainly keep us wondering, its resolution is a bit flat. There is still good humor here, and certainly some charm. But it is muted. Not only have we been here before, but so has Fforde, and it was a more exuberant and energetic place last time. Both Bookworld and the Outland have become more mundane. (And that is the sort of pun that is the best found in the latest edition of the series, where once it would have been middle of the pack.)

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I read it. But I think next time I'll wait for the library to get a copy, rather than preordering it on Amazon.

I'm a rabid Fforde ffan, so obviously I couldn't wait to read the next in the Thursday series. But this isn't the Thursday we know and love, nor is it the Bookworld we are used to. Bookworld's had a massive reboot and overhaul (Bookworld 2.0) and so the reading experience of it was dramatically different - more lively and easy to imagine.

We follow the written Thursday Next, not the proper real world Thursday Next, as she tries to solve the disappearance of the real world's Thursday, without letting anyone know the real Thursday is missing. The written Thursday visits Landon, who she has a crazy crush on (well, he was meant for her, right? Or, um, meant for the real Thursday, who she is meant to be just like.), and starts becoming confused about whether or not she may have suffered a mental breakdown and may actually be the real Thursday.

Through it all we have mimefields (terrifyingly scary), the written Thursday's new robotic manservant (love his way with a Tahiti Tingle - whatever manner of cocktail that is), and the usual problems with Pickwick the dodo and Thursday's malapropist house assistant.

If you're a fan, then you know you need to read it. If you're not, then for god's sake don't start reading here. Start with the Eyre Affair and go from there, in order, or you'll be hopelessly lost and think the series is a crazy load of tosh. Which it is, except - well, it's a cleverly-written, addictive, charming load of tosh that carries many rereads' worth of puns and word trickery. Seriously, you'll love it. Go get it now.

As in the rest of the series, the latest volume in the Thursday Next oeuvre is fast moving, hysterically funny, and amazingly clever, but this time it's also surprisingly moving. The fictional Thursday Next from the previous sequel is the lead, and in her struggles to save the intrepid real world Thursday Next by trying to figure out what her real world self would do, the fictional Thursday Next is oddly more sympathetic than her living, breathing counterpart.

One of Our Thursdays is Missing is set almost completely in Book World--the place where all the books we read are acted out, where Jane Eyre can cavort with Harry Potter or Hamlet or geologist Charles Lyell, where Rubik's Cubes cannot be scrambled, where fan fiction versions of popular characters walk around as thin as paper, and where Mediocre Gatsby, Rupert Bond, and Tracy Capulet resent their more famous siblings. It's a ridiculously fun alternate reality for book lovers.

All of the Thursday Next books are real treats, and so densely ingenious that I never want to read more than a chapter at a time. That means they spend a long time on my night stand, and now that this one is finished I feel bereft. The Thursday Next series is my favorite of Fforde's books. Shades of Grey with its thoroughly imagined culture based on color perception was enticing enough to keep me reading, and the Nursery Crimes series is almost as clever and funny as Thursday Next, but in both cases I missed the literary illusions and of course the quick-witted, resourceful character of the fictional and real world Thursday Next.

I've seen it written where this book starts slow (it does), the plot doesn't deal with the real Thursday (it deals with her, but she's not the protagonist), and that the book focuses on details of the BookWorld more than usual. All true. But to my mind, it was necessary to set up for what is likely to be the seventh and final book in the series and allow Fforde some room to maneuver. Remember, this is a fiction series. Things don't have to stay the same (and in this case, probably shouldn't). But the writing is crisp, the characters are interesting and once the plot picks up (which it does), the story is really good. I don't see why every book should be more or less the same, so if that's what you are looking for, go back and read one of the first five.

"One of our Thursdays is missing" is the sixth book of the Thursday Next series. I read the first and adored it; it seemed like the perfect mix of literary sci-fi, fantasy (or suspension of belief if you prefer that), and a nice twist on the good vs. bad plotline. If this is your first introduction to the Next series, I'll tell you now that you should be reading this stuff in order. Jumping in at the 6th book might be a bewildering experience because Fforde offers no explanations or back-story - either you're in it or you're not.

Still, here's a primer : Thursday Next is our intrepid SpecOps officer, SpecOps being a special unit given to investigating crimes of the Book World. The Book World is a sort of alternate universe where "written" characters play out their book-roles. Thursday has the special ability to be able to travel in and out of Book World, but she actually belongs to the "Real World" - i.e.; the one which you and I inhabit. In this book, Book World is being remade from the Great Library Book World to a Geographic Book World. Written Thursday lives on Fiction Island, and Fforde has a nice little map in the beginning of this book to help the navigational details sit in your head.

In "One of our Thursdays is missing" RealWorld Thursday has disappeared, and "written" Thursday (i.e.; the one from Book World) is trying to find her. So there are actually two Thursdays and one of them is missing - hence the title. Unlike the first book "The Eyre Affair" where RealWorld Thursday traveled into Book World to battle a fictional enemy Acheron Hades, this time around written Thursday must travel to find the genuine article, a process which involves being shot across by a cannon and processed by many Textual Sieves, to land into the RealWorld - "a brutal and beautiful place, run for the most part on passion, fads, incentives, and , mathemantics" and visited most often for things beginning with c : cooking, copulation, Caravaggio, coastlines and chocolate.

It all starts when the JAID (Jurisfiction Accident Investigation Department) calls upon written Thursday to find out why a novel, which was traveling across the BookWorld sky, has broken up and scattered it's graphemes right into a scene from another book. Aiding her in the investigation, is Thursday's clockwork butler Sprockett, who displays emotion with a mechanical arrow - it can point to Worried, Thinking, Doubtful, Peeved etc. Not aiding her are the Men in Plaid (MiP) - a seemingly corruptible version of the Jurisfiction Police.

While I've got to say that Jasper Fforde displays an amazing creative skill, with lots of detail thrown in, this novel didn't work for me as "The Eyre Affair" did. The plot is rather thin, and characters not well developed enough to hold interest. Fforde's writing is humorous but the focus is, from what I could see, on word-play; this book is way too punny for it's own good. I didn't get much of a "feeling" for Written Thursday, who is the main protagonist here. Yes, she is modeled on the RealWorld Thursday, and strives to prove herself as capable her as her inspiration. She also suffers from angst and worry and pines for companionship and Next's RealWorld husband and kids. But other than these facts I know little about Written Thursday, and I can't root for her like I would like to.

Fforde ffans will probably like this, but newbies prepare for much literary wordsmithing.

The sixth book in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, One of Our Thursdays Is Missing is set amid turbulence in the BookWorld. An all-out genre war is threatening to break out between Racy Novel and Women's Fiction. And Jurisfiction/Spec Ops agent Thursday Next is missing. It's up to her written counterpart to get to the bottom of Thursday's disappearance. Meanwhile, she is asked to substitute for the real Thursday at peace talks between Racy Novel and Women's Fiction. She begins to wonder if she might be the real Thursday Next, which would make the plot a whole lot more complicated.

After a fairly slow start, the novel picks up, but it doesn't quite measure up to the other books in the series. The written Thursday just isn't as much fun as the real Thursday, and the puns and jokes that usually have me laughing out loud as I read Jasper Fforde were in much shorter supply. It is definitely my least favorite of the series so far, and I hope that any future Thursday Next books will not continue down this road. If you haven't read the series, I don't recommend starting with this book, as I think it will put you off Fforde, and his other books are really good. He's one of my favorite writers, but this book is a disappointment in comparison with the others. If you have read the series, then you will probably want to read this one, too, so prepare yourself. I seem to be in the minority: most of the reviews I have read are positive. You might find it more to your liking than I did. And I would not be honest if I didn't say that there are some genuinely funny, laugh-out-loud moments. Once the book picked up steam, I finished it in the space of about five hours or so, but I've never had to wait so long for Fforde to hook me before.

P.S. If you're like me and you read this on your Kindle, the map of Fiction Island is impossible to read. Luckily, Fforde has the map available on his website.