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The arrival of a new Jasper Fforde novel at our house is cause for celebration and dancing. (Okay, okay, it would be, if we could dance without embarrassing ourselves). Fforde is a unique writer, difficult to describe, harder than that to review, but with amazing wit and imagination. In the third book of this outstanding, silly series, our hero, Thursday Next, is hiding out in the Character Exchange Program where she takes up residence in a not-very-interesting crime novel called Caversham Heights. As a detective trainee trying to save literature from harm, she spends time in and out of fictional places and situations, meeting ever-so-interesting people (Captain Nemo would like a new book please, he's bored), helping generic characters develop personalities (and the ability to distinguish sarcasm from irony) and listening to nursery rhyme characters complaining that they simply need some time off. Ah well, at least she's not having to save all existence from turning into pink goo (that was the last book). The joy of Fforde's work is not in the straightforward story (the what?) but in the giggles. I'm sure his books baffle some people; I just know there are dozens of references that I don't get (I blame it on being American, not British, and having seriously disliked high school English), but what I do get is just so awfully delightful and silly that I put Fforde in the category of "I'd read his shopping lists". They might not be all that amusing (I want to read Terry Pratchett's too) but I just would like to be sure. Thursday is still trying to find her husband, Landen Parke-Laine who was sort of obliterated by bad guys, although she remembers him until she too starts forgetting about him. She's tracking down bad guys in and out of literature, helping Miss Havisham to mediate among the various characters in Wuthering Heights and who have anger management issues (except for Catherine, they all hate Heathcliff), and looking after Pickwick, the dodo and the soon to be baby dodo, Pickwick's egg. Thursday can be a terribly good listener and a sympathetic ear. Much about grammar and literature is explained, if that's the right word, in this book, as when there are reports received that "reserves of the letter U have reached dangerously low levels" so it is suggested that worlds like neighbour and valour and harbour (and of course, dangerously, be re-spelled to save the "u"s. "If we confine it to one geographical area", it's suggested, "we can claim it as a local spelling idiosyncrasy." Didn't you always wonder why American spelling and English spelling differ so? In this book, the words you say are seen, not heard often. When Thursday and others run up against the terrible Mispeling vyrus, they pin carrots to their clothing; when it gets too dangerous, and the carrot completes its transformation to a parrot, it's time to leave. Along the way, Thursday encounters Emperor Zhang -- you know the type, trying to take over the universe -- who wonders "anyway, what's the point of possessing a devastatingly destructive death-ray if you can't use it?" Good question. Poor Zhang. And we get to learn about the fabulous Hedgepigs Society (which I must join immediately and which, if you must know, advances "hedgehogs in all branches of literature", run of course by Beatrix Potter's Mrs Tiggy-winkle. She's got a lot of support: "It helps with the indignity of being used as a croquet ball in Alice." Well, sure. Go, Hedgepigs Society! And you're lucky -- I won't quote the Watership Down reference with regard to Lennie and all the rabbits. And I can't begin to describe the horrible UltraWord, the latest thing in the development of books, or is it? This is also probably the only book I can think of which would feature the following line: "Nice Minotaur," I said soothingly, slowly reaching for my automatic, which had fallen on the grass beside me, "good Minotaur."
Reviewed by Andi Shechter, March 2004
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