Lost in a Good Book

Welcome to England in 1985, although it may not be quite as you remember it. It is unlikely, for example, that you recall seeing or hearing about the migrating mammoths or the Gravitube, a transport system that could whisk you to New York or Australia in under an hour. Unlikely indeed because this is an England of Jasper Fforde's imagination and it is quite gloriously barmy. Thursday Next, the government agent heroine of Fforde's highly successful novel The Eyre Affair, returns to continue her adventures. In the last instalment she ended up inside the pages of Jane Eyre on the trail of master criminal Acheron Hades. She escaped with her life but the plot of the classic novel was irrevocably altered. Now, back in the 'real' world, her exploits have made her famous but the attention is not always welcome. Certain shadowy figures are still upset that Thursday left one of their number in Poe's The Raven, and they will try all manner of dirty tricks to 'persuade' her to retrieve him. As if this were not enough, the Earth is about to be threatened with devastation from a very unlikely source. To make things right, Thursday will have to travel through time and fiction, difficult and dangerous at the best of times but even more complicated if, like her, you happen to be pregnant. Lost In A Good Book defies simple summarization but taken as a whole it has a certain daft logic, and no small amount of charm. The novel wears its Kafka and Lewis Carroll influences proudly, even introducing the Cheshire Cat, the Red Queen and the courtroom from The Trial to excellent effect. The reader must be prepared for absolutely anything because all rules of time and reality are hopelessly blurred as we follow Thursday through Great Expectations, Swindon and the washing instructions on a pair of jeans. It might be worth reading The Eyre Affair first in order to see exactly how Thursday got to where she is at the beginning of this second episode, but it works perfectly well as a stand-alone work. The journey is thrilling and unpredictable, peppered with literary references and in-jokes that reward the well-read, and altogether a joy. (Kirkus UK)