★★★★☆ Thursday in the Real World

The Woman Who Died a Lot

Jasper Fforde

So, we wend our way at last to the end of the currently extant Thursday Next series. We know this isn't really the end, because eventually Thursday has to become Granny Next, wear blue gingham, and read the ten most boring books in the world. We've already seen that end, and Thursday's story will be complete only when it connects up to Granny Next.

The Woman Who Died a Lot is unusual in that the Book World is almost completely absent. Very little of the action takes place inside books. Rather we have Thursday, husband Landen, teenage genius daughter Tuesday, confused son Friday in search of a purpose, Global Standard Deity priest Joffy, and several old friends from Special Operations (but not Spike, I am sorry to say) dealing with the evil Goliath Corporation, an annoyingly petty God who wants to smite Swindon, and an asteroid predicted to maybe destroy the Earth. So, yeah, all in a day's work for our Thursday. And it's lots of fun, as always.

Now that I've reached the end of the series, a little perspective is in order. I find that I'm glad it's done, but for the opposite of the usual reason. Usually when I'm glad to reach the end of a book it's because it was boring and I struggled through the tedium. But a Thursday Next book is never tedious! Every page sparkles with action and jokes. In fact, they're rather exhausting. Jasper Fforde describes one of the characters in The Woman Who Died a Lot thus,

Finisterre had been one of our backroom boys at SO-27, one of the dependable brainiacs who rarely did fieldwork but could answer almost any literary question you might care to ask. His particular expertise was the nineteenth-century novel, but he was fully competent to professorial standard in almost all fields of literature, whether it be Sumerian laundry lists or the very latest Armitage Shanks Prize winner. He spent his life immersed in books to the cost of everything else, even personal relationships. “Friends,” he’d once said, “are probably great, but I have forty thousand friends of my own already, and each of them needs my attention.”

In this description of Finisterre I feel Fforde is describing his ideal reader. I consider myself well-read, with particular interest in children's books, but even I find it difficult to keep up with the Thursday Next series. (For instance, in The Woman Who Died a Lot there is an entire little subplot concerning Enid Blyton's books, none of which I have ever read.)

So, yeah, Thursday Next is delightful but exhausting, and I am proud and glad to have reached the end! But have I? The Woman Who Died a Lot finishes with these words:

Thursday Next Returns in TN8: Dark Reading Matter.

Fforde claims that Dark Reading Matter is being written as we speak and is due out in 2024. Since The Woman Who Died a Lot appeared in 2012, this would be a 12 year gap. Assuming this bit of vaporware condescends eventually to take solid form, I will read it.

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