First among sequels

Whoopee! A new Jasper Fforde novel is winging its way to our library. It is the next installment in the adventures of literary detective Thursday Next – with the fabulous title of First among sequels. Read all about it.

The Thursday Next series is funny, ingenious, idiosyncratic and impossible to put down. Our heroine Thursday works for Jurisfiction, a policing agency that works within fiction itself to maintain narrative stability. Book one The Eyre Affair sets the scene:

There is another 1985, somewhere in the could-have-been, where dodos are regenerated in home-cloning kits and everyone is disappointed by the ending of Jane Eyre. But in this world there are policemen who can travel across time, a Welsh republic – and a woman called Thursday Next.

alt=””alt=”Cover of Lost in a good book”It was followed by Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, and Thursday Next in Something Rotten. The last came out in 2004, and since then Fforde has been concentrating on another series about the Nursery Crimes Division.

It is not only his books that are well worth a visit. He has one of the niftiest author web sites around – Fforde Grand Central.

Jasper himself visited Christchurch a couple of years ago. He spoke at Easts Bookshop and was as smart and funny as you could hope. He gave me a postcard of the Seven Wonders of Swindon.

I can’t imagine many things better than cosying up with a hot drink and a Jasper Fforde.