After reading the prequel, "The Eyre Affair", I knew I was in for at least a very surreal read when I embarked on Fforde's latest, "Lost in a Good Book". Again, Fforde delivers a story that does not merely require you to suspend your disbelief, but also hang it, draw it, and quarter it. At times it careens right across the border between credulous and ridiculous, snapping right back when you're almost about to sigh deeply and commend it to some or other waste receptacle. Yet in between all the unrelentingly mad chaos that is the world of literary detective Thursday Next, there is the unmistakable mind of Fforde that hurls blow after blow at your cranial humour buds. Some of the stuff is just too funny to spoil by quoting here. Some of the concepts are also quite unusual, most evidently the ability to travel in and out of books, or even washing label texts for that matter.

For those of you craving for a very unusual read with some cool bits of depth here and there, "Lost in a Good Book" is essential nourishment. You'd do well to read "The Eyre Affair" first. After that, it will suffice to expect the unexpected, prepare for the merely improbable, count on the highly impossible.

For those of you who want even more of this verbal lunacy, expect the third book in the series, "Well of Lost Plots", sometime later.

Released 2003, ISBN 0-670-03190-9 - Click here to buy or check out this book

RK

Written May 2003

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