The Woman Who Died a Lot (Thursday Next Series #7)

by Jasper Fforde

Overview

The smashing seventh book in the New York Times–bestselling Thursday Next series

With more than one million books in print worldwide, Jasper Fforde’s beloved series charms a growing number of readers with each new adventure. In The Woman Who Died a Lot, Thursday Next faces her trickiest assignment yet.

When her former SpecOps division is reinstated, Thursday assumes she’s the obvious choice to lead the Literary Detectives. Instead, she’s put in charge of the Swindon All-You-Can-Eat-at-Fatso’s Drink Not Included Library. But where Thursday goes, trouble follows. As the new Chief Librarian faces one-hundred-percent budget cuts and the ever-evil Jack Schitt, the Next children face their own career hiccups—and possible nonexistence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780147509765
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/24/2013
Series:	Thursday Next Series , #7
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	83,064
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jasper Fforde traded a varied career in the film industry for staring vacantly out the window and arranging words on a page. He lives and writes in Wales.

Hometown:

Brecon, Powys, Wales, United Kingdom

Date of Birth:

January 11, 1961

Place of Birth:

London, United Kingdom

Education:

Left school at 18

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for The Woman Who Died A Lot

“Fforde continues to show that his forte is absurdist humor in his seventh crime thriller starring Thursday Next, a member of the Literary Detectives division of Special Operations in an alternate-universe Britain. [An] endearingly-bizarre fantasy world limited only by Fforde’s impressive imagination.” –Publishers Weekly

“As always, Fforde makes this wacky world perfectly plausible, elucidating Ffordian physics with just the right ratio of pseudoscientific jargon to punch lines. It’s a dazzling, heady brew of high concept and low humor, absurd antics with a tea-and-toast sensibility that will appeal to fans of Douglas Adams and P. G. Wodehouse alike. Fforde is ffantastic!”
–Booklist (starred review)

“Strap in and hang on tight.... Another winner for fans and lovers of sf, time travel, puns, allusions, and all sorts of literary hijinks.”
–Library Journal (Starred review)

“Jasper Fforde fans, rejoice! The Woman Who Died a Lot, the seventh installment in his Thursday Next series, delivers all the imagination, complexity and laughs we've come to expect from Fforde and his book-hopping, butt-kicking heroine.The Woman Who Died a Lot brings together the charming lunacy and intricate plotting that have enthralled Fforde's readers over the years.” –Shelf Awareness

“In Misery, Stephen King compares the euphoric feeling writers experience in creative bursts to ‘falling into a hole filled with bright light.’ Avid readers also know that feeling: A good story temporarily erases the world. British novelist Jasper Fforde has expanded on King’s simile in a wonderful seven-book series of novels featuring Thursday Next. Enormously knowledgeable about literary history, Fforde scatters nuggets for nerdy readers like me. By the end, all of Fforde’s myriad particles of plot, accelerated by his immense skill and narrative sense, collide, producing pyrotechnics and a passel of new particles to propel his next tale. I love the Thursday Next books, and when a new one appears, I don’t fall but leap into this bibliophile’s Wonderland.” –The Cleveland Plain Dealer

“This is the proverbial madcap lighthearted romp, full of hijinks, parody, and puns. Jasper Fforde does it well. It’s safe to say that if you enjoy that particularly British, Douglas Adams-style absurd delivery of wry observations, you’ll get a kick out of this one.” –New York Journal of Books

“The Welsh writer Jasper Fforde's wildly inventive books defy easy description — more accurately, they mercilessly mock the concept of easy description. Are they mysteries? Outrageous parodies of literary classics? Science fiction? Absurdist humor? Gleeful mashups of all the above? [The Woman Who Died A Lot is] still big, big fun, with enough in-jokes to keep anyone snickering for a long time — especially English Lit geeks.” –The Seattle Times

“Quirky and surprising and funny. Thursday fans will welcome her return.”
–The Free Lance–Star
UK praise

“Reading a Fforde novel feels like taking off on a magic carpet, only to be picked up by another and another and taken on new flights of fantasy... When the plot is thundering along, peppered with jokes, lively dialogue and silly names ... you just sit back and enjoy the ride.”
–Scotsman

“Jam packed with ingeniously witty ideas.”
–SFX.co.uk

“A riot of puns, in-jokes and literary allusions that Fforde carries off with aplomb.”
–Daily Mail

“Fans of the late Douglas Adams, or, even, Monty Python, will feel at home with Fforde.”
–Herald

“Forget all the rules of time, space and reality; just sit back and enjoy the adventure.”
–Sunday Telegraph

“Parallel-universe larks with surreal heroine Thursday Next, trying to get some down time in Swindon. Fat chance.”
–Mail on Sunday Live Magazine

“More inspired lunacy in a truly funny read.”
–Press Association

“Any worries that by now the Thursday Next series would have settled into a rut prove groundless here, as Jasper Fforde delivers another swerveball ... It’s the usual mix of fiendishly clever plotting and exquisitely executed comedy setpieces” **** –SFX

Editorial Reviews

Fforde (One of Our Thursdays is Missing) continues to show that his forte is absurdist humor in his seventh crime thriller starring Thursday Next, a member of the Literary Detectives division of Special Operations in an alternate-universe Britain. This time, it’s 2004, and Next is about to have a crowded week, even by her standards. As she puts it, it “began with a trip into Swindon in order to find myself a job and ended with a pillar of cleansing fire descending from the heavens, a rethink on the Wessex Library Service operating budget, and my son shooting Gavin Watkins dead.” Meanwhile, Britain is attempting to manage a stupidity surplus: “he nation’s stupidity—usually discharged on a harmless drip feed of minor bungling—had now risen far beyond the capacity of the nation to dispose of it in a safe and sensible fashion.” Toast has become the newest fad food, spawning a popular chain of topless toast bars known as Tooters. Such details help flesh out this endearingly-bizarre fantasy world limited only by Fforde’s impressive imagination. Agent: Will Francis, Janklow & Nesbit U.K. (Oct. 2)

Publishers Weekly

One of Our Thursdays is Missing, like other Fforde novels, is jam packed with spot-on parody, puns and wry observations about words and genres that will delight literary-minded fans of the series.

Los Angeles Times

There is no denying Fforde's supersized imagination, linguistic agility and love of books, Books, BOOKS.

Chicago Sun-Times

One of Our Thursdays is Missing is filled with passages [in] which geeky humor jostles with genuine insight about the current state of fiction.… [T]ake a joy ride with the passionate reader who wrote this novel.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

[With a] furiously agile imagination…Fforde has shaken up genres—fantasy, comedy, crime, sci-fi, parody, literary criticism—and come up with a superb mishmash with lots of affectionate in-jokes for any book lover.

Miami Herald

As always, Fforde makes this wacky world perfectly plausible, elucidating Ffordian physics with just the right ratio of pseudoscientific jargon to punch lines. It's a dazzling, heady brew of high concept and low humor, absurd antics with a tea-and-toast sensibility. Fforde is ffantastic!

Booklist

Still recovering from injuries received in the line of duty, literary cop Thursday Next is anticipating a promotion in this seventh series entry (after One of Our Thursdays Is Missing) but instead finds herself being put out to pasture as—gulp—a librarian! However, this is Fforde's book-mad alternative England, where few are as respected as the heavily armed librarians in charge of the nation's tomes. But some woes are universal, and Thursday must face massive budget cuts while also contending with problems at home with her children (one of whom doesn't actually exist), a continuous stream of doppelgängers trying to replace her, and the reappearance of her archenemy, Jack Schitt. Together, the Next family struggles to prevent not only the destruction of their hometown via an actual religious smiting but also an apocalyptic event not due for another 37 years. Strap in and hang on tight, because the timeline is as linear as a wet noodle. VERDICT Another winner for fans and lovers of sf, time travel, puns, allusions, and all sorts of literary hijinks. [See Prepub Alert, 4/16/12.]—Devon Thomas, DevIndexing, Chelsea, MI

Library Journal

The seventh romp through time, space, and literary arcana for beleaguered superheroine Thursday Next (One of Our Thursdays is Missing, 2011, etc.). Thursday's going through a bad patch. She's walked with a cane since a botched assassination attempt. She's lost the chance to head up SO-27, the Special Ops Network, to Phoebe Smalls, and has been made chief librarian at the Wessex All-You-Can-Eat-at-Fatso's Drink Not Included Library Service instead. She frets over the kidnapping of her daughter, Jenny, who's nothing more than a mind worm planted in her memory by her nemesis, Aornis. Her son Friday, who expected to be one of the Chronoguard elite and repeatedly rescue civilization, has received a Letter of Destiny telling him that he'll kill Gavin Watkins and spend the next 40 years in prison. Her genius child Tuesday is having difficulty producing a shield that will annul the asteroid-smiting scheduled to descend on Swindon in a day or so. And every so often, Thursday realizes she isn't herself anymore, but a Day Player, one of several synthetic replicas of herself let loose by Krantz in violation of the Unlicensed Nonevolutionary Life-Forms on the Mainland Act. Are Goliath, the scourge of the world conglomerate, and Jack Schitt, intent on planetary domination, responsible for any of this? Not the immediate problem, as Thursday must first figure out why racy 13th-century novels of St. Zvlkx are being vandalized, deal with Enid Blyton aficionados who favor the very unpolitically correct versions of her works, and escort the Righteous Man to the smite zone, where his presence will skew the incoming smite further out of town. Looming on the horizon is the dreaded confrontation with the Dark Reading Matter. Literary know-it-alls will cackle over the reappearance of Millon de Floss, the Hay-on-Wye reference, and the notion that books and their upkeep really matter. Those less addicted to puns, time warps, and intergalactic humor will reach for the Excedrin.

Kirkus Reviews