The Well of Lost Plots

This is the third book in the crazy Thursday Next series and yes, I did enjoy it but the first half was pretty slow to be honest and then suddenly it picked up and the last two thirds was great fun and totally bonkers. I love this series because it is so ridiculous.  Here Thursday is hiding out in a  kinda crap third rate unpublished novel in the lower basement of the book placement depository (known as the Well of Lost Plots.) so she can hide from the evil Goliath company. She has done an exchange with one of the minor characters in the book so that the bored female character can have a sabbatical from her mind numbing  and cheesy role. (The book is called Caversham Heights and involves lots of boring police procedure action around Reading.)  

This book is impossible to describe but basically Thursday is trying to find her eradicated husband but along the way she uncovers a dastardly plot (concocted by an evil politician in the real work who is really just an escaped book character living a secret double life) to make all books 'ULTRAWORD Trade mark' which will force all books to become interactive ereaders where words, plots and storylines can be edited simultaneously and used as tools for mass propaganda.  Miss Haversham helps Thursday rocket between the two worlds and together with the help of cliched characters from unpublished novels, the witches from Macbeth and Solomon (judgement of)  they manage to foil the dastardly deed. The Goliath company are beginning to track agent Thursday down to the crap Well of Lost Plots  so right at the end of the book Thursday has to hide in the 'Footnote sewer' to successfully reveal the evil plan.  Of course I love the mad play with language and the jumps from high brow to low brow references. I especially loved the scene of Rage Management for the characters in Wuthering Heights, the strike by oral traditional characters who felt they were not getting their true recognition due to their status of not being well known in the world of print.  (Humpty Dumpty was their shop steward) and the incredibly dangerous Mispeling Vyrus where suddenly, if you were unlucky enough to be caught in its net, floors change to flour and walls change to balls. (Uriah Hope got caught up in the vyrus and got his personality and surname changed forever.)   The thing I love about these daft books is Jasper Fforde's incredible imagination.  Reading these is exactly the same joy I got as when I read Terry Pratchett novels as  a teenager. MADNESS and a lot of geeky fun, which feels very comforting.