Literary heroine Thursday Next and her supporting
characters return in The Woman Who Died a Lot, a novel in which
Jasper Fforde focuses more on Thursday Next's personal life than he
normally does. Not only does Next's husband, Landon Parke-Laine
appear in the novel, but so do their children, Friday, Tuesday, and
Jenny, the latter of whom does not actually exist. Into this mix,
Fforde tosses the sort of bureaucratic wrangling which features in many
of his novels and the evil mechanizations of Goliath and the Hades
family.
Fforde's characters are the focus of the novel and
Fforde expands on the base of characters he has previously
provided. Although Thursday's family has been mentioned in
previous novels in the series, the only member of her immediate family
to really be spotlighted is Landon Parke-Laine, her occasionally
non-existent husband. Fforde now reveals Friday as a major member
of the ChronoGuard, or at least he would be except budget cuts have
caused the group to never have existed. Tuesday, a high school
student, is trying to blend in with her peers even as she works overtime
to create a defense against a disaster of biblical proportions, for God
has announced that Swindon will suffer a smiting during the week the
book covers. Convoluting the family relationship is Landon and
Thursday's daughter Jenny, who doesn't actually exist, but is a mindworm
implanted into Thursday by her enemy, Aornis Hades, who has gone missing
after escaping from prison.
As with many of the Thursday Next novels, Fforde's
plot is quite convoluted and does not necessarily stand up to close
scrutiny, but the plot is not the most important thing. For instance,
the storyline revolving around Aornis and Jenny is obvious to the
reader. It is clear that Thursday will eventually solve the puzzle, but
the suspense isn't enough to make that portion of the novel's plot
interesting. In The Woman Who Died a Lot, Fforde seems to
have decided that throwing idea after idea at the reader is the way to
make the book interesting, so the reader is introduced to Day Players,
Dark Reading Matter, and the Swindon All-You-Can-Eat-at-Fatso's Drink
Not Included Library Service. Some of these ideas work, some
don't, but they never really come together to form a coherent
whole. Instead, they serve as extended jokes to hang his character
on. And Fforde does punctuate the novel with several clever
one-liners as well.
Which is not to say that The
Woman Who Died a Lot is not a worthwhile addition to the Thursday
Next series and Fforde's overall ouevre. Thursday Next
offers the resourcefulness and cleverness which has been the hallmark of
the series as Fforde presents a variety of mysteries for Thursday and
the reader to solve, situations rife with danger fro not only Thursday,
but those she loves, and a clever, twisted worldview, which is at the
heart of the entire series.
In the previous novel, One
of Our Thursdays is Missing, Fforde successfully
revitalized a series which had been showing signs of outliving its
cleverness. If The Woman Who Died a Lot doesn't
quite live up to One of Our Thursdays is Missing's level, it
still offers an excellent admission to the world and characters of
Jasper Fforde's Swindon.
