Chapter one: 'A Woman Named Thursday Next.'
If you weren't already aware you immediately know this is going to be an unusual book.
Millon de Floss!
ChronoGuard - Time Travel!
'The chronoclastic ether' - wonderfully evocative
Literary detectives - counterfeit Coleridge or fake Fielding (Henry or Helen?) . This is a novel for book lovers - maybe.
Pet dodo - reverse extinction. When is this novel set?
French revisionists - setting out the alt-history stall early.
Goliath Corporation - TNN news network. Evil? Murdoch?
6th May 1985!?
Gordon Duff Rolecks!
By the end of Chapter one you probably know if you're going to love or loathe this novel. It's 1985. History is malleable. The Crimean War has been ongoing for 130yrs. England is at war with Socialist republic of Wales. Character names are ridiculous.
Chapter 2: Martin Chuzzlewit manuscript stolen. A locked room mystery. Seems odd that Thursday doesn't seem to suspect time- travel. Having just seen her dad freeze time in chapter one this seems like an oversight.
Chapter 3. Landen Parke-Laine! Acheron Hades. Great villain name. Doesn't show up on film (hence no CCTV footage)
Chapter 4. More Dodos. Genetic splicing.
Henry Fielding bubble gum cards. Literature is embedded in society. A world Fforde would like to live in? Where writers are treated like footballers.
The first mention of Jane Eyre
Baconians trying to discredit Shakespeare. (Radical New Marlovians)
Acheron and Styx. Rivers of hell
Chapter 5. We learn something of Acheron's tricksy nature. Slightly confused by fact that Snood is said to have mentioned Hades name. I can't find reference to it.
'Parked Studebaker' Lots of references to out of place and time popular culture.
Next's first link to Jane Eyre appears in this chapter.
... Chapter 6. Things are getting a bit meta, as Thursday enters the text of Jayne Eyre.
When I first read this book, I hadn't read Jayne Eyre. I still haven't, but I do know a little bit more about it now.
This chapter introduces a very important idea. That books can be interacted with. Not normally during the main plot, but at the fringes. Incidental characters spend a lot of time doing nothing, and are more than happy to chat with visitors.
Chapter 7: Next brushes up with Goliath corporation's secret police.
Jack Shitt. I'm not sure about this name. It's a bit too obvious for me.
Chapter 8: Airships. Not sure this qualifies as a steampunk novel but airships definitely constitute an important part of the genre.
'Will-Speak machines' another example of the pervasiveness of literature in Fforde's world.
'Stoker - Vampires and Werewolves...Call me Spike' - makes me smile every time.
Chapter 9: Mycroft, another virtuoso creation. Invented a memory erasure device and a machine that can differentiate between thirty brands of cigar. Delightful homage.
Chameleocar - Surely Carmeleon would have been better? This is such an obvious moniker, I assume Fforde has deliberately chosen no to use it. Making Mycroft seem scattier?
Flying Toaster Retinal Screen Saver - so sharp, time has blunted it.
Chapter 10: The finest use of the banana in literary history.
Hotel drawer full of religious texts.
Chapter 11: The story is beginning to take precedence over world building.
Chapter 12: Bowden Cable. The ease of accessing the Internet makes understanding Fforde's names much easier. Clearly a Bowden cable was a thing, but without Google I would never have known.
I love the clever naming in this chapter. It is possibly my favourite part of the whole book.
Chapter 16: Sturmey Archer, goes well with Bowden cable.
'Goliath don't buy, Next. They appropriate.' A foreshadowing of Amazon?
Chapter 17: On the face of it this chapter is pointless and entirely surplus to requirements. It isn't.
Having said that it does add a level of weirdness to Thursday's world, which peculiarly makes the book seem more mundane.
Chapter 18: An inspired reinvention of Shakespeare, once again emphasising the importance of literature in Thursday's world.
Chapter 20: Dr Runcible Spoon!
Chapter 22: Further discussion about the true identity of Shakespeare. I really enjoy these digressions.
Chapter 23: 'Poet Writer General'. The depth of Fforde's world-building is phenomenal. The quality is in the detail. Such as bothering to invent an alternative title for the poet laureate or repeated use of 'English' rather than 'British' as there is no concept of Britain.
Chapter 27: Time travel. The latter half of this chapter, interesting as it is, feels superfluous. The fact that it's essential to the plot is to the book's detriment. I imagine if this sort of vague time travel paradox went unexplained in Dr Who, I'd be complaining bitterly.
It does however set up one of the world's best time travel gags.
Chapter 28: ' I like free speech as much as the next man, but on someone else's airtime, hmm'. News controlled by corporation.
Oswald Mandias!
Chapter 31: Again quality world building. Not only is there a communist Peoples Republic of Wales, but it also has trade enclaves much like Hong Kong and Macau.
Jones the manuscript and Haelwyn the book, brings back delightful memories of Ivor the engine.
Bookworm by products; genius.
Chapter 33: Thoughtful conversation on life inside a book vs real life and the power of memory
Chapter 33: Thoughtful conversation on life inside a book vs real life and the power of memory
Chapter 35: 'Human emotions, well...they're just a fathomless collections of greys and I don't do so well on mid tones.' I wonder if this line gave the seed of the idea of the wonderful Shades of Grey, probably my favourite and most thought provoking of Fforde's books (On the subject of which, Jasper, when's the next one out?)
Walter Branwell. Another genius name.
Finished! A fine novel, just as much fun as the first time I read it.