Fforde, Jasper 1961–

views updated

Fforde, Jasper 1961–

PERSONAL: Born 1961, in London, England; son of an economist and a homemaker.

ADDRESSES: Home—Wales. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Viking, 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014. E-mail—email@jasperfforde.com.

CAREER: Writer. Former focus puller (assistant cameraman) for numerous films, including Quills, Goldeneye, Entrapment, The Saint, and The Mask of Zorro.

WRITINGS:

FICTION

The Eyre Affair, Hodder & Stoughton (London, England), 2001, Viking (New York, NY), 2002.

Lost in a Good Book, Hodder & Stoughton (London, England), 2002, Viking (New York, NY), 2003.

Thursday Next in the Well of Lost Plots (also published as The Well of Lost Plots: A Thursday Next Novel), Viking (New York, NY), 2004.

Something Rotten, Viking (New York, NY), 2004.

The Big over Easy: A Nursery Crime, Viking (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: Jasper Fforde's novel The Eyre Affair was inspired by the "unanswered questions" in the plots of popular nineteenth-century literary classics. On his Home Page, Fforde described The Eyre Affair as "a literary detective thriller with romantic overtones, mad inventor uncles, aunts trapped in Wordsworth poems, global multinationals, scheming evildoers, an excursion inside the novel of Jane Eyre, dodos, knight-errant-time-traveling fathers and the answer to the eternal question: 'Who really wrote Shakespeare's plays?'" The novel is full of literary references, jokes, and puns, while telling the tale of Thursday Next, a literary detective.

Thursday Next was described by Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times as "part Bridget Jones, part Nancy Drew and part Dirty Harry." Her "archnemesis" is Acheron Hades, "a former English professor turned all-purpose criminal," Kakutani noted. Though Kakutani found Hades and "the rest of the supporting cast" of the novel to be "cartoonish," she observed that "they gradually emerge as useful foils to the driven Thursday, who acts more and more like a conflicted yuppie when she isn't in her gunpacking Clint Eastwood mode."

Prior to embarking on a full-time writing career, Fforde worked in the film industry for twenty years, starting at age eighteen. He has admitted to having had no interest in higher education, having known "from the time I was 10 or 11 I wanted to be in films," as he told Mervyn Rothstein in an interview for the New York Times. For fourteen of those years he worked as a focus puller, a person responsible for the cameras and keeping the actors in focus. He traveled widely and learned the grammar of film: plots, subplots, flashbacks, denouements, location changes, false endings, and the like. "I think the idea of writing is an extension of this love [for film]—the idea that given one's imagination there is really nowhere you can't go, no impossible situations that can't be created, no boundaries that can't be pushed," Fforde noted on his Home Page.

In the late 1980s Fforde began writing in earnest. "I would work on a film for six months," he informed Rothstein, "and then take as long as I could off, conserving my money and writing. I started with short stories." Fforde added: "The stories got longer and longer and became a novel." He wrote four unpublished novels before finding a publisher for his fifth novel, The Eyre Affair, which took him six years to write.

Many reviewers noted the mix of genres found in The Eyre Affair. Rothstein called it: "A combination of fantasy, comedy, science fiction, Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut, Lewis Carroll, Monty Python and even Buffy the Vampire Slayer." "At first this story seems almost too complicated to follow, and far too full of laboured student jokes," wrote Vanora Bennett in her London Times review, but she later continued: "But read on. It takes a while to get into it, but sooner or later it becomes clear that this is both more old-fashioned and more fun than the annoying Post-Modernist game that it might appear to be." "What Fforde is pulling, of course, is a variation on a classic Monty Python gambit: the incongruous juxtaposition of low comedy and high erudition," explained Charles Shaar Murray in his London Independent review. "Surreal and hilariously funny," observed a Publishers Weekly contributor, who believed the book would "appeal to lovers of zany genre work (think Douglas Adams) and lovers of classic literature alike."

The Eyre Affair was followed by Lost in a Good Book, in which "Thursday discovers there is a policing agency within books that looks after fiction from within," Fforde told Jessica Cargill Thompson in an interview for Time Out. "In a surreal adventure which circumvents time, history and reality … Fforde displays a gift for satire and off-the-wall humour, coupled with a rich, tangential imagination," wrote Greg Eden in a review of Lost in a Good Book for Scotland on Sunday. "The targets of his satire," Eden continued, "are many and varied from Shakespearean comedy and organised religion, to police procedures and international politics." Lost in a Good Book "sold out its entire hardback print run by 4pm," the day it was published, Stephen Armstrong reported in the London Sunday Times.

Thursday is hiding out in a common police procedural story in a realm known as BookWorld in her next adventure, titled alternatively Thursday Next in the Well of Lost Plots or The Well of Lost Plots: A Thursday Next Novel. Pregnant with the child of a husband who is not only missing but does not yet exist, she is losing her memories via a "mindworm" and must also deal with sundry duties such as looking after a group of characters from nursery rhymes. Writing in the Library Journal, Devon Thomas noted that "there's a pun on every other page and a galaxy of literary and pop references to keep the reader's head spinning." Booklist contributor Keir Graff commented that in addition to the author's usual humor, "there's both a decent mystery and a book lover's plea to save the world's messiness from corporate streamlining."

In Thursday Next's fourth adventure, Something Rotten, the literary detective is back in her hometown of Swindon, England, following a two-year stint in BookWorld, and hunting for a Shakespeare clone. Meanwhile, her husband has been "eradicated" by an evil corporation, and while trying to resurrect him she battles supervillain Yorrick Kaine, attempts to save Hamlet, and competes in a Harry Potter-like game of SuperHoop in an effort to save the world. Along the way other familiar characters pop up, including the Cheshire cat, Beowulf, and the Merry Wives of Windsor. In addition, the Hardy Boys books are overrun with Starbucks coffee shops, and Hamlet can't decide whether to order an espresso or a latte. Critics agreed that Fforde's series continues to delight readers. Keir Graff of Booklist wrote: "Fforde's inventiveness is seemingly inexhaustible." A Publishers Weekly contributor predicted the book "will have hardcore fans roaring." Lev Grossman of Time noted that "genuine pathos can be found in the interplay between the world of fiction and its drabber, realer counterpart, but Fforde doesn't go looking for it." Janet Maslin of the New York Times commented that "it's easy to be delighted by a writer who loves books so madly."

Fforde launches a new series with his novel The Big over Easy: A Nursery Crime. Also set in a world where fiction is reality, the novel features Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his efforts to bring to justice such notorious criminals as the Three Little Pigs, who are under trial for killing the Wolf, and his current case, which is hunting down Humpty Dumpty's murderer. In his review in Booklist, Kier Graff noted that "even readers who start out groaning may find themselves grinning." Devon Thomas wrote in the Library Journal that the novel "is good fun for all fiction collections."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 2003, Keir Graff, review of The Well of Lost Plots: A Thursday Next Novel, p. 706; July, 2004, Keir Graff, a review of Something Rotten, p. 1797; June 1, 2005, Keir Graff, review of The Big over Easy: A Nursery Crime, p. 1760.

Entertainment Weekly, August 6, 2004, Gregory Kirschling, a review of Something Rotten, p. 85.

Independent (London, England), August 11, 2001, Charles Shaar Murray, "When Detection Meets Deconstruction," p. 10.

Independent Sunday (London, England), July 22, 2001, Scarlett Thomas, review of The Eyre Affair, p. 17.

Library Journal, January, 2004, Devon Thomas, review of The Well of Lost Plots, p. 168; July 1, 2005, Devon Thomas, review of The Big over Easy, p. 67.

New York Times, February 12, 2002, Michiko Kakutani, "Flee, Dearest Jane, Flee, It's a Fiend from the Future," p. E8; April 1, 2002, Mervyn Rothstein, "A Novelist Who Writes for Himself," p. E1; August 5, 2004, Janet Maslin, "Hamlet Meets Minotaur and Spaceship," p. E9.

New York Times Book Review, February 17, 2002, Kera Bolonik, "A Specter Stalks the Victorian Novel," p. 17.

People, August 23, 2004, Joe Heim, a review of Something Rotten, p. 49.

Publishers Weekly, December 17, 2001, review of The Eyre Affair, p. 69; August 16, 2004, review of Something Rotten, p. 44.

Scotland on Sunday, June 14, 2002, Greg Eden, "Every Girl Has Her Day."

Sunday Times (London, England), July 28, 2002, Stephen Armstrong, "So the Story Goes," p. 16.

Time, August 2, 2004, Lev Grossman, "Paper Chase," p. 80.

Time Out, July 1, 2001, Jessica Cargill Thompson, review of The Eyre Affair; July, 2002, Jessica Cargill Thompson, interview with Jasper Fforde.

Times (London, England), July 24, 2001, Vanora Bennett, "A Literary Alternative," p. 15; July 28, 2001, Vanora Bennett, "Fantastic Voyage," p. 17.

Washington Times, January 27, 2002, Colin Walters, "Getting into Books, with Extreme Malice," p. 6.