Lost In a Good Book

What a great read. This book is bonkers, bonkers, bonkers. Even maybe a little too bonkers because in each chapter so much happens and my brain was just constantly being fried. The parallel universe of 1985 becomes even more craz y in my second adventure with Miss Next as she realises that she is pregnant by her husband who is suddenly eliminated from the world and all conscious memory ( apart from hers) when the Goliath World Dominating Company black mail her into releasing Jack Schitt from his eternal damnation and hell like existence from within the confines of the pages of Edgar Allen Poe's

The Raven. 

Just writing this weird nonsense above makes me feel strange. I can't write about this book successfully because it is all so crazy and wonderfully insane! Thursday Next realises she has a special talent for book jumping and she can literally move into the pages of novels when  she reads them aloud. She ends up in Great Expectations and Miss Haversham becomes her book jumping or rather 'jurisfiction' guide. ( top notch book jumpers can move from book to book without the need to re-enter reality.)  Miss Haversham teaches her a lot and even Miss H  manages to jump into this real parallel world of Swindon in 1985 in order to buy books at a pound sale and drive fast cars (because Miss Haversham is a demon car racer at heart.)   Thursday Next then learns more tricks from the book librarian, the Cheshire Cat. I loved the surreal world of the eternal book library, to me it was like the Bodleian Library personified, because every book was a living breathing entity.  Thursday Next then deals with characters from books posing as humans, she also ends up trapped in the world of written washing labels on clothes and then simply travels through the centre of the world in a gravitube in 40 mins to Japan.  ( There are no aeroplanes in this parallel existence!) it's all so mad it sounds ridiculous..which it is but I LOVED IT and didn't want it to end.

I especially loved the time warps and bits on coincidences when all probabilities and coincidences merge at one point. The bits on time travel were weird but still fun and the characters who only speak through footnotes were bonkers too.

This book is not for everyone. But hey give it a go if you are a complete freak who would also appreciate   Neanderthals, mammoths and dodos being reintroduced on our planet and Wales to be a Socialist Republic and also if you are someone who literally likes getting lost in a good book!

Great fun!