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Summary
Summary
One of Our Thursdays is Missing
Author Notes
He worked for many years in the film industry as a camera technician. He was raised in England, he lives & works in Wales.
(Publisher Provided)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
With the real Thursday Next missing, the "written" Thursday Next leaves her book to undertake an assignment for the Jurisfiction Accident Investigation Department, in Fforde's wild and wacky sixth BookWorld novel (after Thursday Next: First Among Sequels). As written Thursday Next finds herself playing roles intended for her real counterpart, BookWorld's elite try to deal with a border dispute between Racy Novel and Women's Fiction. It's not always possible to know where one is in BookWorld, which has been drastically remade, or in Fforde's book, which shares the madcap makeup of Alice in Wonderland, even borrowing Alice's dodo. Outrageous puns (e.g., a restaurant called Inn Uendo) and clever observations relating to the real book world (e.g., the inhabitants of "Vanity" island now prefer Self-Published or Collaborative) abound. Fforde's diabolical meshing of insight and humor makes a "mimefield" both frightening and funny, while the reader must traverse a volume that's a minefield of unexpected and amusing twists. 10-city author tour. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Fans of the fantastic Thursday Next series are well acquainted with Fforde's astounding capacity for invention but even they might not be prepared for the plot twist here. This installment is narrated not by Next, the legendary literary detective who passes freely between the RealWorld and the BookWorld, but by the written Thursday Next. The real one has gone missing just as she was due to preside over vitally important peace talks with the genre of Racy Novel, which wants to expand its borders and has threatened to set off . dirty bom. in Women's Fiction. Now it's up to her fictional version to find her. The good news is that the written Thursday looks like the real Thursday and has Thursday's Jurisfiction badge. The bad news is that she's not a very good detective and, given the difficulty of reading the players' political motives, she doesn't know whom to trust. The mystery is a bit overcomplicated, although that's part of the joke. (As the written Thursday narrates. It was frustrating because, this being Fiction, most of the relevant facts would already have been demonstrated to me but safely peppered with enough red herrings to ensure I couldn't see the true picture.) The real treat, though, is the BookWorld. Ffordian physics are delightfully entertaining, and the difference between the BookWorld as described in the previous books and the BookWorld as it (supposedly) actually exists is wonderfully fun to wrap your head around. It's too bad we can't visit the BookWorld in real life but by reading this book, maybe we actually have.--Graff, Kei. Copyright 2010 Booklist
Kirkus Review
Any intersection between Fforde's novels and a recognizably real world are almost entirely coincidental, for he's most at home in constructing insouciant (and elaborate) literary fantasies.Thursday Next, the protagonist of many of the author's previous novels, is back...or rather, she's not, for she's the missing girl of the title. And although she vanishes, the written Thursday Next does not. The plot involves the search for the "real" Thursday Next, when she disappears a week before peace talks preceding the possible outbreak of a genre war, so the written Thursday Next sets out to find her. (Yes, it's all a bit confusing, and Fforde has great fun ringing changes on this confusion.) Written Thursday Next is on the case, exploring the various byways of BookWorld and eventually going up the mighty Metaphoric River, with its echoes of Conrad. Of course, in Fforde's fictive world almost everything has some kind of literary echo: Cabbies take the written Thursday to Norland Park (from Sense and Sensibility); she meets Jay Gatsby's less famous brother, the Loser Gatsby (younger sibling to the Mediocre Gatsby); she learns that Heathcliff is riding the same train she is (and notes "a lot of screaming and fainting girls on the platform whenever we stopped"); has drinks at the Bar Humbug; and comes across signs like "Do Not Feed the Ambiguity." Fforde, of course, finds all of this highly diverting and even includes sly references to The Eyre Affair, an earlier Thursday Next novel. To appreciate Fforde, it's both helpful and essential for a reader to have a substantial literary background. While some of the gags are sly and work well (for example, the confusion about whether a character named Red Herring is actually a red herring), others are rather forced and seem to exist solely for the sake of a punch line ("I think we've driven into a mimefield").Your appreciation of Fforde will depend solely on your tolerance for self-conscious, and occasionally slick, literary cleverness.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
When we last saw intrepid Jurisfiction cop Thursday Next (in Thursday Next: First Among Sequels), she was, once again, kicking butt while saving both the real world and the world of literature. However, just as the BookWorld faces a major geopolitical crisis, Thursday has gone missing. Can her BookWorld equivalent, the written Thursday, find her in time to prevent war among genres? Written Thursday is less than confident as she struggles with snippy coworkers, a substitute who hits the hyphens hard and brings home goblins, relentless and homicidal Men in Plaid, and a foreboding trip up the Metaphoric River. But written Thursday does have a stellar butler, Sprockett, and her likeness to the real Thursday is very useful in the investigation, if confusing to those around her. More concerned with the inner workings of BookWorld than the alterna-England of the real Thursday, this entry gives a backstage view of the world of literature and just what happens to characters when their books aren't being read. VERDICT More metafiction fun from the best-selling Fforde-maybe not the easiest place to join the series, but a must-read for fans. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/10.]-Devon Thomas, -DevIndexing, Chelsea, MI (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
