Score: 4/5
"He's Back On Form"
I thoroughly enjoyed the weirdness of The Eyre Affair when I first read it (and the hallowed Orson Scott Card seems to agree). The idea of a meta-fictional world where characters from books actually lived and worked, and had a following for their stories, was fascinating. I didn't think the follow- ups lived up to the promise of that first book, and I stopped buying them.
Maybe it was that meta-fictional world and the heroine "Thursday Next" that was holding him back, because he's ditched both for this book.
Now we follow detective Jack Spratt and Mary Mary of the Nursery Crimes Division (the idea of Nursery Crimes still tickles me). This is a different meta-fictional world, so you still bump into characters from other books (particularly nursery rhymes), and other name-slightly-changed-to-protect-from-litigation detectives.
It's a fun book, with a lot of humour and, especially, literary jokes. One problem with that is that I've no idea how many literary jokes were in there - I only know the ones I got, and that's probably not a good percentage of all the ones written. Still, I can live with that.
He also has a tendency to throw in things like 'mull foon', just to see if you're paying attention. I have no idea why.
If you enjoyed The Eyre Affair but later ditched Fforde's work, this one's worth picking up.
I mean, how could you not love 'Nursery Crimes'?
Categories: 4 Word Book Reviews
Permalink #.Posted by 'geoff' on Monday, 22 May 2006 at 12:57PM
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