33 years old (in body if not mind), and living in Edinburgh. A keen interest in cycling, cars, spor...
33 years old (in body if not mind), and living in Edinburgh. A keen interest in cycling, cars, sport, design, writing and movies. And marzipan. Can't get enough of that stuff...
Member since:03.11.2003
Reviews:64
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As a benchmark for a writer's true ability, second novels usually provide the greatest insight. First novels often contain the best idea that a writer will have, and while some of the writing finesse will not yet be quite developed, that great idea will carry the story well. Novels after the second, by their simple existence, will show that a writer has 'stickability' and will most certainly have learned more of the craft. But the second novel is something entirely different, especially when combined with a successful first novel and an idea you're trying to turn into a series.
The Eyre Affair proved a winner for Jasper Fforde, dropping Spec-Ops Operative 'Thursday Next' into literary misadventures in an alternative 1985 Swindon where Dodos and Mammoths have been recreated from their DNA and time-travel paradox is a way of life (sort of like a comedy literary version of Minority Report).
Basically it is possible to travel through time, and into books (or, indeed, anything written) where people will interact with characters contained therein, and the unscrupulous will try to change and affect stories, or simply hide. This is where the Spec-Ops come in - certainly in the Literature Division - making sure that books remain as they always have been.
Lost in a Good Book takes this initial, very humourous, premise and stretches it - with Thursday Next now married to Landen Parke-Laine, having defeated her nemesis Acheron Hades in the first book, and trapping Goliath Corporation's Jack Schitt in a copy of The Raven.
Things start to go wrong when Mr Schitt-Hawse (yes, it's already a tired pun), Jack Schitt's cousin, eradicates Landen and blackmails Next to return to The Raven to retrieve Jack.
What follows is a rollercoaster of literary characters, novels, washing instruction labels, the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland and neanderthals. The first novel was much the same and traded on the confusion it created, here the confusion feels a bit more loose, with Fforde diving off on half a dozen sub-plots, with a lack of true continuity absent for the majority of the read. The finding of Shakespeare's missing play, Cardenio, and the one-chapter werewolf hunting diversion, don't really add much to the story and the book starts to read like a number of disjointed set-pieces that Fforde wasn't sure how to string together.
But he put them together anyway.
There ARE moments of subtle genius in the book that save this and make it possibly worth reading to for those who enjoyed the first book: the coincidence-warning entroposcope; the out-of-book Miss Havisham; the mammoth migration. But these aren't quite enough to save the novel from being a pale imitation of its predecessor - and the 'to be continued' advert for the third in the series, 'The Well of Lost Plots', makes you think that this is a 'novel-lite', written to publisher's order and to a tight deadline.
I can't help feeling that with a bit more time spent on it (this sequel followed only a year after the original) this could have been a worthy addition, but instead I find myself feeling that this is a series I would have preferred to see remain at one book.
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Jan 8th, 2008
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