First Among Sequels

Jasper Fforde (author)

Hodder & Stoughton, UK: 2007; 395pp

ISBN: 9780340752012

Genres: adventure, fantasy, humour

Issues: imagination

advanced vocabulary, concepts

With the Read-o-Meter clicking down at a depressing rate, the Stupidity Surplus at dangerous levels and Reality TV Shows sucking the joy out of life, can Thursday Next restore reading to its true value?

Officially, most branches of SpecOps were closed down years ago and Thursday Next is now an Acme Floor Covering technician. Unofficially, she's failing to convince her lazy layabout sixteen-year-old son to join the ChronoGuard as he's destined to invent time travel – and save the world several hundred times. Even more unofficially she's still working in Jurisfiction, trying to train a new apprentice (or two), convince Text Grand Central that Reality Book Shows are a very bad idea, work out what the Goliath Corporation really have in mind with their transfictional Austen Rover tour bus and generally save the world of literature from the inside out. In her spare time she participates in illegal cheese smuggling in order to fund her unofficial work, thereby ensuring that she gets a decent Macaroni Cheese every once in a while.

Jasper Fforde is a unique – and almost unclassifiable – talent in fiction. His love of language and literature, his wild and warped imagination, his capacity to take the reader on a manic rollercoaster ride through half a dozen genres are all part of his comic genius. If you think of Douglas Adams mixed with Monty Python, Terry Pratchett and a dash of Stephen Fry, you might be close to understanding the attraction of Jasper Fforde. Read it for yourself and annoy your family and friends by laughing out loud.

'Humans like stories. Humans need stories. Stories are good. Stories work. Story clarifies and captures the essence of the human spirit. Story, in all its forms – of life, of love, of knowledge – has marked the upward surge of mankind.' (p221)

Warning: there may be some classic novels you'll never look at quite the same way again.