Book Review: The Woman Who Died A Lot

The Woman Who Died a Lot, by Jasper Fforde

This is Jasper Fforde at his best and his worst.

The writing is witty and wonderful. The story arcs are wild and unpredictable. The characters are well-drawn and seem exceedingly normal is an unnatural world.



The plot, is, well, bizarrely Ffordeian

This is book seven in the Thursday Next/Bookworld series. I've read them all, but my mistake was finding book number six, One of  Our Thursdays is Missing, and reading it first. That was a long time ago, and over the years, have read them in order. So I had a background before cracking this one open.

In some ways, it's a little too much Fforde. The plot is all over the place. So much is going on that trying to determine what is happening at any given moment is a special challenge. It's just better to let it all ride. Let me try to sort it out.

Thursday Next is home recuperating, in a forced retirement, after an assassination attempt at the end of the last book. But Thursday doesn't taken lying down lying down. God, now known as the one and only Global Diety, has come out of hiding and has been smiting towns (because he can). Thursday's hometown of Swindon is next on his list, so her daughter, Tuesday, a young scientific genius, is preparing an anti-smiting shield that may or may not work. (It depends on something called the Unentanglement Constant.) Thursday's son, Friday, has lost out on his future job as head of the force that polices time-travel because travelers to the future discover that time travel is impossible. Friday also knows he is destined to murder someone within a week and thus will spend most of his future in prison.

Meanwhile, lots of synthetic Thursdays keep showing up and replacing her. Also meanwhile, representatives of Goliath -- the company that either runs everything in this world or wants to -- keeps stealing obscure 13th century manuscripts. Thursday, in her prestigious (really) new job as chief librarian of Swindon's All-You-Can-Eat at Fatso's Drink Not Included Library, meets one of the thieves, Jack Schitt -- her nemesis throughout this seven-book series -- in her office. It leads to this conversation:

"'We don't often see any Goliath high-fliers in Swindon,' I added. 'What position are you on the ladder these days?'

'Ninety-one. The corporation rewards loyalty.'

'So? Starbucks rewards loyalty -- and they're not out to take over the world. Okay, that was a bad example. Tesco's rewards loyalty, and they're not out to ... Okay, that's a bad example, too. But you know what I mean.'"

Such is an example of the Welsh author's off-beat sense of humor. Here's another: Angry God's smiting of Swindon will center on the town cathedral. The City Council wonders how it will be replaced: "'The price of cathedrals is simply shocking these days, and insurance is impossible, as you know.' 'The "Act of God" clause?' 'Right'"

The town also takes its libraries seriously. Libraries have their own police forces, and the uniform includes combat fatigues, "replete with the distinctive camouflage pattern of book spines for blending into library spaces." Its chief in Swindon begged Thursday to sanction pre-dawn raids to collect on overdue books.

Like I said, sometimes a bit overdone. But don't worry. Fforde wraps things up nicely, although I am not sure if the series is ending -- this book was published in 2012, and Fforde has gone on to other books.

But you never know.