If you have ever read a novel by Jasper Fforde, you realize that it is hard to know what to make of him. I’m certain that friends of his must have said the same thing, even after spending time with him face to face. When I encountered the first of his famous Thursday Next series, The Eyre Affair, I was convinced I had chanced upon another of those critically acclaimed novelists who flop in the realm of actually selling books. Little did I know that Fforde’s bizarrely delightful writings would find a niche in postmodern literature, securing each of the subsequent books in the series a place on bestseller lists.
In my last post, I mentioned that I’m on the lookout for books for readers, those books which utilize as pieces of a puzzle all the literary information a reader has stored in their memory. Fforde is brilliant at this, but unlike Alexander McCall Smith, he has trouble bridging the gap for the casual reader.
The Fourth Bear, second in his Nursery Crime series, may be one of the least obscure books Fforde has yet written, though it still generously gave the reader literary allusions aplenty. In fact, at surprisingly frequent intervals throughout the story, the author makes fun of himself and the very act of writing a novel. In this and The Big Over Easy (first in the series), Fforde rewards readers of his other books with payoff plotlines including characters introduced in earlier works, but they can certainly be read alone. And I highly recommend that you do so.
If you haven’t read the Thursday Next books, you won’t be lost in these quirky tales incorporating suspenseful mystery and nursery rhyme, but you will enjoy the author’s clever melding of worlds. While I found The Big Over Easy a superior work (The Fourth Bear seemed a bit too hastily finished), both are worth taking a look, whether you are the escapist reader or a serious student of literature.
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