It’s some time since I last visited the wonderfully silly parallel-universe Swindon inhabited by Jasper Fforde’s literary detective, Thursday Next (‘First Among Sequels’, reviewed here in April 2009). So it was a great pleasure to reacquaint myself with Thursday’s friends, family, colleagues and enemies in Jasper Fforde’s new Thursday Next novel, ‘The Woman Who Died a Lot’. If you haven’t worked your way through the Thursday Next canon I suspect this would be completely incomprehensible: even an experienced Nextian has to pay attention to work out what is going on. This is a tale of the after-effects of the end of time travel, the use of dodos to explore unpublished fiction and the difficulties of knowing whether the body you are inhabiting is your own or a time-limited replica. I’m not sure whether you would call this science fiction, fantasy or comedy: it’s delightfully silly and very clever. Despite the complexity of the plot ‘The Woman Who Died a Lot’ felt like light relief after Fforde’s very different previous novel 'Shades of Grey' (no, not that one! – reviewed here in April 2011) which I found hard work. I was pleased to be reminded of the tourist slogan of the Socialist Republic of Wales (“not always raining”), to finally twig that ‘Thursday Next’ is itself a line from ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and to discover that there is now an annual gathering of Jasper Fforde fans in Swindon (obviously) which is inevitably called the ‘Fforde Fiesta’!
Thursday, July 26, 2012
'The Woman Who Died a Lot' by Jasper Fforde
26 April 2012
It’s some time since I last visited the wonderfully silly parallel-universe Swindon inhabited by Jasper Fforde’s literary detective, Thursday Next (‘First Among Sequels’, reviewed here in April 2009). So it was a great pleasure to reacquaint myself with Thursday’s friends, family, colleagues and enemies in Jasper Fforde’s new Thursday Next novel, ‘The Woman Who Died a Lot’. If you haven’t worked your way through the Thursday Next canon I suspect this would be completely incomprehensible: even an experienced Nextian has to pay attention to work out what is going on. This is a tale of the after-effects of the end of time travel, the use of dodos to explore unpublished fiction and the difficulties of knowing whether the body you are inhabiting is your own or a time-limited replica. I’m not sure whether you would call this science fiction, fantasy or comedy: it’s delightfully silly and very clever. Despite the complexity of the plot ‘The Woman Who Died a Lot’ felt like light relief after Fforde’s very different previous novel 'Shades of Grey' (no, not that one! – reviewed here in April 2011) which I found hard work. I was pleased to be reminded of the tourist slogan of the Socialist Republic of Wales (“not always raining”), to finally twig that ‘Thursday Next’ is itself a line from ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and to discover that there is now an annual gathering of Jasper Fforde fans in Swindon (obviously) which is inevitably called the ‘Fforde Fiesta’!
It’s some time since I last visited the wonderfully silly parallel-universe Swindon inhabited by Jasper Fforde’s literary detective, Thursday Next (‘First Among Sequels’, reviewed here in April 2009). So it was a great pleasure to reacquaint myself with Thursday’s friends, family, colleagues and enemies in Jasper Fforde’s new Thursday Next novel, ‘The Woman Who Died a Lot’. If you haven’t worked your way through the Thursday Next canon I suspect this would be completely incomprehensible: even an experienced Nextian has to pay attention to work out what is going on. This is a tale of the after-effects of the end of time travel, the use of dodos to explore unpublished fiction and the difficulties of knowing whether the body you are inhabiting is your own or a time-limited replica. I’m not sure whether you would call this science fiction, fantasy or comedy: it’s delightfully silly and very clever. Despite the complexity of the plot ‘The Woman Who Died a Lot’ felt like light relief after Fforde’s very different previous novel 'Shades of Grey' (no, not that one! – reviewed here in April 2011) which I found hard work. I was pleased to be reminded of the tourist slogan of the Socialist Republic of Wales (“not always raining”), to finally twig that ‘Thursday Next’ is itself a line from ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and to discover that there is now an annual gathering of Jasper Fforde fans in Swindon (obviously) which is inevitably called the ‘Fforde Fiesta’!
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