In literary England, if you travel north by northeast of London, wending toward Wales and the Irish Sea, you will eventually stumble upon an area I would like to call the Isle of Cute. While other British mystery novelists elect to scare and some to intrigue, the writers who hail from this area would rather nuzzle the bejesus out of you.
For the past six years, Jasper Fforde has been at the forefront of this cozying crowd, churning out one impossibly winning book after another about Thursday Next, a croquet-playing female detective who chases marauders through Bookworld, a place that looks every bit like our own—the exception being that you can literally enter and exit books in Fforde’s universe.
In this fashion, Thursday has rescued several books from the well of lost plots, restored Jane Austen to her rightful place in literary history and consulted with characters out of Lewis Carroll.
But even a fantasist’s world gets punctured every now and again. Although readership levels are up in England, low culture is on the march—and so it is too in Fforde’s latest installment in the series, Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, his first book since taking a two-book hiatus with a nursery crime series, based on figures out of popular children’s yarns.
As we begin it’s the year 2002, and Thursday’s 16-year-old son, Friday, would rather spend his days in bed than doing pretty much anything. A sense of lethargy hangs about. The Stupidity Surplus is on the rise. “No one’s reading books much anymore,” says Thursday early on, assuring her husband her Spec-Ops days are behind her. “So I’m fairly redundant.”
But, as Thursday soon finds out, there’s a serial killer on the prowl somewhere in Bookworld. Sherlock Holmes is killed at Rheinbeck Falls; Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple loses her life in a sudden car accident. If this killer isn’t stopped, the entire foundations of the murder mystery might be wiped out.
You needn’t have read these books to enjoy First Among Sequels. Indeed, what captivates here is something that will appeal to any reader—the feeling that there’s something at stake in fiction, that characters created in books are every bit as real as the memory of a person.
Of all the Thursday books, this one is by the far the most busily plotted, but Fforde’s greatest gift is on display. He beautifully captures that sense of embattlement that hovers over readers today in a world crowded with other forms of entertainment. The evil Goliath Corporation is back, threatening to turn Bookworld into a tourist trap; reality-TV book shows threaten to rise up; and amidst it all, Thursday needs to do battle with the other “Thursdays” created by Fforde’s own series—which are, of course, in Bookworld now, too. There may not be blood on the carpet, but it’s gripping, indeed.
In Three Bags Full, Leonie Swann takes a bloodier route into this Bermuda triangle between fantasy, mystery and book-nerdiness, launching a mystery series in which the heroes and heroines are, well, sheep. As the story begins, a shepherd named George is murdered in the Irish village of Glennkill. He is found in the morning dew with a spade shoved through his chest, a sheep’s hoofprint on his torso. Was he killed by man or beast?
The answer, amusingly, will be figured out by his flock, who learned their powers of reasoning (and speaking) from stories George told them every afternoon. In his absence, the sheep feel like a book club tasked with tracking down a murderer. Miss Maple leads the charge of reasoning, while Zora and Othello, a black sheep, go it alone. Sir Ritchfield, an aging ram, may have seen more than he at first admits.
At times, it feels like there are just too many characters in the book to keep track of—especially since they have very few identifying physical characteristics other than their woolly coats and the tone of their bleats. There is also a whole cast of humans—greedy farmers, a conniving butcher, an inspector named Holmes (not that one)—to follow.
Things pick up, however, when Swann’s woolly protagonists begin studying the narratives implicit in human life. Observing the squabble of women who knew George, the sheep begin to think they are trapped inside a love story gone awry. Othello attends George’s funeral and comes away thinking it’s something more along the lines of horror.
In the end, the sheep discover they’re in a genre entirely unto themselves. It’s one that uses the spectacle of violence to grip you, but then makes you wish it were cold enough to wear a sweater. Not to worry; something tells me this flock will be back before too many winters pass.
Three Bags Full
***
Leonie Swann
Flying Dolphin Press, $22.95
Thursday Next: First Among Sequels
****
Jasper Fforde
Viking, $24.95