Customer Reviews

Well of Lost Plots, The

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In his previous two novels, Fforde created a wacky, fictional universe in which "real world" characters could transport themselves into books, associate with the characters there, turn back the clock, and even change the endings. Heroine Thursday Next, has saved Jane Eyre from disaster, imprisoned Jack Schitt in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," and ended the Crimean War, but she has also made enemies of some powerful criminals, one of whom has gone back in time and killed off her husband when he was just a small child. Now, pregnant, she is the only person who can remember him as an adult, and her memory is failing. Anxious for a rest, she decides to go with her dodo Pickwick to visit the Well of Lost Plots, where all book characters, plots, and settings reside until they are chosen for novels.

In this most literary of Fforde's three novels, Thursday is an apprentice agent-in-training for JurisFiction, the policing agency that works inside books, her mentor and guide being Miss Havisham from Great Expectations. Living inside an unpublished crime thriller, Thursday explores the Great Library, where the Cheshire Cat is librarian, sees the workshop for backstories (some used, some not), meets generic characters ("human canvases without paint") and "orals" (nursery rhyme characters), tours available settings (high-capped mountains, arched stone bridges, ruined castles), and watches as Miss Havisham joyrides in "Chitty Bang Bang." Holesmiths work there fixing holes in narratives, grammatacists try to prevent grammacites (gerunds) and mispeling vyruses from infecting novels, and pace-setters, moodmongers, and plot speculators work on new creations.

As the Well considers installing the UltraWord operating system, which will expand the basic eight-plot architecture into thirty-two plots, Thursday tries to preserve the memory of Landen, fight against her enemies, and win her trial for a fiction infraction. Fforde pulls out all the stops here, creating a carnival ride through books and the creative process with surprises and delights on every page. Less plot-driven than the previous novels, this novel is episodic, with scenes ranging from a Star Wars-type bar scene to a group counseling session for the characters in Wuthering Heights. While Thursday's exact role is not always clear, Fforde's ability to free the reader's imagination and keep him/her involved in the literary world with its infinite possibilities is daunting. Full of satire, parody, puns, literary jokes, and word play, this latest in the Thursday Next series provides hours of entertainment for anyone interested in books and how they "work." Mary Whipple

From the first chapter of Jasper Fforde's third novel, you can tell that the author had a blast writing this satiric mystery that explores the creation of fiction. Thursday Next - pregnant by her eradicated husband, haunted by a Hades sister intent on destroying her memory, and a Jurisfiction apprentice to none other than Miss Havisham of Dickens fame - takes refuge in a poorly written and unpublished crime novel called Caversham Heights. Thursday expects to rest there until the birth of her child, but she and Miss Havisham discover that the death of another agent by a Minotaur attack might not be the accident it seems. Meanwhile, nursery rhyme characters threaten a strike for not being treated like other fictional characters, two generic characters living with Thursday begin to become more well-rounded, and Thursday tries to save Caversham Heights from being destroyed by the Council of Genres for being so hopelessly bad.

The more you know about literature, the more hilarious you'll find this fantasy. Characters are being manufactured in record numbers because Vikram Seth is planning a new novel, and no one wants a return to minimalism simply because of a character shortage. Heathcliff, Catherine, and the rest of the characters from Wuthering Heights attend anger management classes, and Mr. Toad is relentless in his competition with Miss Havisham for the fastest driver in both the Book World and the Outland. And if you're interesting in writing, you'll gain tips for keeping your novel out of the Text Sea, as Fforde pokes fun at hackneyed writing and incomplete character development.

Because this is my first Fforde novel, I started reading this without any knowledge of what has happened previously in the series, but the author provides enough of a synopsis in the beginning to give a new reader the proper bearings. Despite this, there remains a disjointedness at times as so much satire is pumped into the book that does little to advance the plot. Sometimes Thursday seems to be there purely as a straight man, raising the question that perhaps Fforde should have heeded some of his own lessons in fiction writing. Fortunately, these lapses are few and don't hinder the enjoyment of the novel as a whole. This relatively long novel is not demanding and can be read more quickly than the page count might indicate.

As a literary joke, The Well of Lost Plots is a triumph. As a mystery/fantasy, it is less successful. Readers will nonetheless delight in Fforde's imagination as he takes them through the land of the unpublished and the more solid, though more turbulent, ground of the classics.

The third installment in the Thursday Next series took me longer to read than the other two put together. It seemed to me to be an expansion of "Lost in a Good Book", written to set the stage for "Something Rotten".

Stop shaking your heads - it's a good book, filled with adventure and incidental stories, but essentially Thursday's story doesn't advance very far from book two. She's still pregnant, Landon doesn't exist yet, and she's still hiding out in the BookWorld.

This time, Fforde takes us through the Great Library and Well of Lost Plots in much greater detail, and his imagination is as fertile as ever, making book lovers purr with excitement as characters from great works of fiction interact with each other.

The BookWorld is a fascinating place, where grammasites stampede around changing text, spam has infiltrated the footnoterphone system, and plot devices are sold like cheap Rolexes. Dangerous creatures abound, real and fictional, human, animal and half bred, and the vast Text Sea can change the flow of booklife at any time.

Thursday must overcome pregnancy limitations, the deaths of her coworkers in Jurisfiction, and insidious plots; deal with dodo rearing, training of generic characters, and saving her less than perfect book-home, and also rack her brains to defeat the memory changing Aornis Hades. The worst challenge of all is something even more terrifying - something that drives fear into the hearts of people everywhere - the dreaded computer software upgrade.

Jasper Fforde is still very clever, but this time he's not as punny.

Warning: Not recommended to be read without the benefit of the first two novels.

Amanda Richards October 16, 2004

While I thoroughly enjoyed the first two Thursday Next novels, I had a lot of trouble falling into Jasper Fforde's world the third time. There was very little advancement of the story; instead most of the book involved the description of the world-within-a-world, The Well of Lost Plots. I felt like I was watching one of those movies that rely far too much on special effects: all the razzle-dazzle of the gramasites, the Text Sea, plots being sold on the black market, etc. try to distract the reader from the lack of an actual STORY. Here's hoping the next book is better.

"The Well of Lost Plots," by Jasper Fforde, is the third in a series of books about literature come to life. The lead character is a young woman named Thursday Next, who has been through some harrowing adventures that culminated in the eradication of her beloved husband. She is pregnant and needs some time to regain her peace of mind. Surely, the place to relax is "The Well of Lost Plots," which consists mostly of unpublished books that will never make it into print. Thursday takes up residence in a badly written and boring crime thriller named "Caversham Heights," a book that is generally considered to be beyond repair.

Alas, Thursday is unable to enjoy her newfound serenity for long. She needs to study for her Jurisfiction Entrance Exam, and it is a tough test. Jurisfiction is a policing agency that works inside books to uphold their integrity. Thursday is studying under the guidance of her strict but kind mentor, Miss Havisham. When a murderer begins to knock off members of Jurisfiction, both Thursday and Miss Havisham risk their lives to apprehend the perpetrator and bring order back to the world of reading.

Fforde has created a new and imaginative universe called the BookWorld, a place that is filled with a whole host of interestingly named curiosities. For example, there are "TravelBooks" that enable Jurisfiction agents to move smoothly and quickly from one book to another, and "generics," creatures that are created with no personalities and no history, who will eventually be fleshed out so that they can become characters in books.

"The Well of Lost Plots" is a bibliophile's delight, with its cunning and satirical allusions to such classic works as "Anna Karenina," "Lord Jim," "Gulliver's Travels," and "Moby Dick." Fforde is both paying homage to and making fun of these great works, and his humor and wit are a joy for anyone who loves the written word. Thursday is an amiable character and her adventures are engaging and lighthearted fun.

On the downside, "The Well of Lost Plots" is too long. It slows down considerably in the middle, and I had to struggle to make my way to the end of the book. This novel would have been much more readable had the author pared the narrative down to its essentials and not padded the story with so many characters and subplots. Still, I tip my hat to Jasper Fforde for creating a delightful, inventive, and clever series.

Is it too early to suggest that Jasper has jumped the shark? Maybe, but I'm less indulgent about whether Thursday Next has.

Was it sophisticated intentional irony to set a book in a world of chaotic, unfinished, badly written drafts that itself feels chaotic, unfinished and badly written? I carped at Fforde in `Lost in a Good Book' that he'd be better off dropping his pretensions of plot (particularly an `overplot' for the series) and running with enjoyable stand alone surreal episodes. Here he barely bothers: Thursday can't remember Landon but then - after a mere page of unintegrated dream flapdoodle - she can. How nice. Meanwhile she's still done nothing to attempt to restore this supposed core love of her life. OK, lets dismiss the utterly unsatisfying overplot, what about the one for this novel? UltraWord(tm). Oh, I get it - it's a bit like Microsoft. Ho ho, smirk. This joke (I think it'd be stretching things to call it satire) works for about a paragraph - yet he milks this baby dry. Pageturner 1.3. Bookmark version 2.6 (or whatever), Jasper, we get it already.

OK, so the series plot has stalled, and the central one of this particular book is weak. `Lost plots' indeed. Still, plot's never been his strong point - let's get onto some of his traditional strengths: amusing Douglas Adams style leaps of imagination, and charming characters. Well, for the former, yeah, OK, there are some cool ideas here and there (although I'm struggling a bit to recall them, um, maybe the generics. And I did like the way this book connected with `The Big Over Easy'. The mispeling vyrus was mildly amusing the first time - ah, hey, it's misspelt - Oh, Jaaaaasper) - and the whole notion of being able to wander into any book at any time has fantastic potential. But a lot of other writers do this better. For a start, Fforde's pool of books is tiny - it's like he did a couple of undergrad literature courses (Austen, Dickens, Bronte, Shakespeare) - even, perhaps just one on classic English literature - and there's not a lot more going on. We're either supposed to feel impressed that he's dropped some names we might have heard of, and/or smug that we get the reference. Hey, I got the Biggles cameo. I didn't feel that smug. More importantly, he name drops classic characters or genres or settings but that's about it. There's not even an attempt to recreate and improvise with them in novel ways. Ms Havisham is probably the one he tries hardest with, but there's not even a whiff of Dickens in more than name. Even if he had've dropped the Havisham name and tried just creating her as a character, there's very little going on of interest between her and Thursday: somehow they're supposed to have this great professional respect between mentor and acolyte, but this is assumed rather than built. So we don't get a rounded new character to enjoy, nor do we get an avatar of an old one. What we get is a lame reference - and it's not enough.

It would be really cool if we suddenly found ourself in a range of novels with a real awareness (and love of) their conventions. An Asimov novel, say, where Thursday would suddenly find herself stacked and doting on some arrogant lead male - or would deliciously subvert this. Or a few pages of Steven King desperation and suspense. Or dropping in some classic characters who act and talk like they did originally - so we're aware why they ever gained their popularity. In pops Sherlock Holmes, with his quirks and methods. Here's Bertie Wooster, and you know what, he's hilarious - no, he's not just called Bertie Wooster, he says the sort of things Bertie would say, with the same exquisite turn of phrase. Alternatively we could find out it's an act, and once he steps off set he's dry and maliciously urbane. It's not, and I think you might have got my point by now, merely Fforde pulling a name of a book and dropping it into this one. It's not enough.

Charm? It feels a bit like Groundhog Day (not overall - this was, in contrast, generally a clever, charming film. Stick with me, I mean it feels like a bit in the film. You'll get it. Sorry, am I going on a bit long in these parentheses?). You know, where Bill Murray has had some lovely romantic moments with Andy McDowell one night, but in trying to recreate them on the next and the one after that he loses the magic, "OK, OK, c'mon, I pat the dog, you laugh, we slip on the snow into each others arms, you're happy, blah blah, can we get on with it." Thursday's friends and family sometimes used to do and say some charming things, here they more sort of hint at them. Most of the dialogue is transactional, "Hey, look out, it's going to get you." Instead of building emotional ties, Jasper goes for the cheap soap opera technique, "Who will die tonight?" Nobody feels much for these characters, but surely if we kill one of them we'll get some sort of response?! Well, Jasper kills a few (again the irritating conventional clanger of suddenly killing off several characters in a week that have supposedly survived lifetimes of danger and intrigue, while the rookie inexplicably lives on to solve the crime), but we have to manufacture the emotion.

Finally, somewhere along the line I stopped liking Thursday. I really was quite fond of her in `The Eyre Affair', but now I'd really rather hang out with someone else. She's still smart, I suppose, but she's not a particularly sympathetic character. "Plock, plock", says Jasper, "I gave her a pregnant dodo, for goodness sake - how much more charm can you want!?" Sorry, it's trimming, it's not enough.

The Well of Lost plots is the third in the series of Thursday Next novels, and the well of lost plots it certainly is. Unlike Lost in a Good Book or The Eyre Affair, the reader gets tired of Thursday?s character pretty quickly. In the first two, she was witty and interesting. Here, she is completely different. The novel gets so caught up in ?bookspeak? that we completely miss the main idea, if there was one to begin with. Its an interesting mix of fantasy and literature, but it didn?t do anything for me.

I really loved the first two books in Fforde's Thursday Next series. Therefore, I was extremely disappointed in "The Well of Lost Plots." I literally could not finish it. I always have a pile of books by my bed and the call of another author was just too great. I abandoned this book on about page 150. I was mired in cleverness and inside book jokes. Other reviewers have noted that this book takes place almost entirely inside the world of books. I think that may be the problem. There's no connection to the characters in the Outland or the previous storylines. Also, I began this book within a day of finishing "Lost in a Good Book"; maybe I just needed a break. Thursday Next is my hero and I wanted to read more about her. I just couldn't maintain my interest in the plot -- or lack thereof. I'm going to try the fourth book in the series, upon the recommendation of one of the reviewers, but I found this book to be considerably less satisfying than the first two. Be forewarned.

Yes, the Well of Los Plots is dazzlingly imaginative. But it delivers precious little of the Thursday Next we know and love from Fforde's previous two (delightful) efforts. Here she is little more than a projectile careening from one madcap scene to the next. The hilarity, too, is sadly superficial. Ultimately, the alternative world of The Well of Lost Plots is a joyless place, where literature is, really, just another dreary industrial product. This novel feels like an unwelcome digression from the REAL story, which, hopefully, will resume very soon.

Elizabeth Saztre does a very good job reading the audio version of this book. I especially enjoyed the voice of Miss Haversham. The book and the series are wonderfully imaginative, and a refreshing change from other fiction.