Like all of Fforde's books, this one doesn't present itself well for and easy summary. In fact because the plot is not really a plot but more like a 'stream of unconsciousness' or a Marx Brothers movie, it's best to just flow along and not worry about a 'plot' as such.

This is 'situational' writing. Fforde puts Thursday in a situation, and then spends the rest of the book, getting her out of all kinds of plots that do or do not have anything to do with the situation. In this book Thursday, who is pregnant (by her non-existent husband, Landon), goes to hide in the book world from her antagonist Hades sister, who is trying to wipe out Thursday's memory. Got that?

A good part of the book is used to set-up his second series 'nursery crime division' which she does as, uh... read the book. Just let me say that it's all verbal fun and verbage.

Undercover operative.


Or perhaps between covers, as there is a lot of hiding out in books and exploring the alternate fictional reality for new agent Next.

A detective of course, in these non-realistic fluffier type mysteries has to have a murder (or several), and that is certainly what she gets, in amongst the book shows and libraries of anything, and bad guys out to get her.

Quirky, but the mystery part isn't too interesting.


3 out of 5

Wonderful - the author invites us into a fascinating world that is both recognizable and original. The characters are clever, ingenious, warm, endearing and captivating - the multi-plots weave their way around the story line apparently writing themselves and the next book to come. All the while this delightfully engaging complexity dances around a mystery that can be solved by the attentive reader but still surprises. This is a book writers book to read. Habitually, after my first reading, I purchase the book on Cd and listen to it again while driving. All of this author's books are great - may Jasper Fford live forever so that the series never ends - did I say it was wonderful?

All of the Thursday Next novels by Jasper Fforde are rollicking literate adventures through a parallel universe of Jurisfiction Detectives and Special Operations work around the slightly wonky town of Swindon, England. As a fan of airships, speeding motorcars, literary references and toast with jam, I find the series worth reading over and over until the next Next installment.

I spent much of this book wondering when the plot was going to get started. Very little happened in the first 3/4 of the book; it was all set-up, with Thursday wandering around and meeting people. The final 1/4 of the book was interesting, but it didn't really make up for the rest.

I think part of the problem was that Thursday wasn't working for SpecOps in this book, but instead was living in the BookWorld. She wasn't working cases, which I've always enjoyed. She also left behind all the problems she was facing in the real world. The only one that follows her into the BookWorld is Aornis, and that was one of the few things I found interesting in this book.

I still enjoyed the book, but not nearly as much as the first two in the series. I'll definitely re-read the first two eventually, but not this one. I'm looking forward to reading the fourth in the series, because I know it has Thursday back in the real world again. I'm hoping that is an improvement.

It's late. Your spouse says, "Turn off the light. It's after midnight." You mutter, "One more chapter." This is that kind of book. And it's LOL good.

Look for the passage between the Bellman and Lady Cavendish. "Item seven. The had had and that that problem..."

"Indeed. The uses of had had and that that have to be strictly controlled; they can interrupt the imaginotransference quite dramatically, causing readers to go back over the sentence in confusion, something we try to avoid...At the last count David Copperfield alone had had had had sixty-three times, all but ten unaproved. Pilgrim's Progress may also be a problem due to its had had/that that ratio."

"So, what's the problem in Progress?"

"That that had that that ten times..."

This novel is a joy from beginniing to end. I read the above passage, a little over a page, to everyone who enjoys the nuances of English.

PS - Don't try reading this aloud to anyone unless you practice it several times. Sure to bring on a fit of the giggles.

I really loved the first two books in Fforde's Thursday Next series. Therefore, I was extremely disappointed in "The Well of Lost Plots." I literally could not finish it. I always have a pile of books by my bed and the call of another author was just too great. I abandoned this book on about page 150. I was mired in cleverness and inside book jokes. Other reviewers have noted that this book takes place almost entirely inside the world of books. I think that may be the problem. There's no connection to the characters in the Outland or the previous storylines. Also, I began this book within a day of finishing "Lost in a Good Book"; maybe I just needed a break. Thursday Next is my hero and I wanted to read more about her. I just couldn't maintain my interest in the plot -- or lack thereof. I'm going to try the fourth book in the series, upon the recommendation of one of the reviewers, but I found this book to be considerably less satisfying than the first two. Be forewarned.

Jasper Fforde has tickled me again. I just love his sense of humor and the silly, nerdy, bookish stuff he writes into all his novels. I think this is my favorite of the series (though I haven't yet read Something Rotten, of course). Mr. Fforde must have had the time of his life writing this book.

My favorite part? I cracked up during the discussion about the 'had had' and 'that that' problem! Surely Mr. Fforde put a lot of effort into writing that dialogue and making sure it came out making sense. And I appreciate it. Hilarious!

As a mystery novel, it isn't great. Most of the book was used up by literary silliness, and the plot didn't really get moving until about halfway through. I didn't mind that so much, and I'm not really complaining, because I enjoyed the literature spoofs enough. But had there also been an excellent story embedded in the cleverness, the novel would have been brilliant rather than just a fun romp.

The first time I read this series I was blown away by how imaginative Fforde is. He creates a world that is fascinating, hilarious and realistic at the same time. How I wish I lived in the world Thursday Next inhabits and had the ability to jump into books. I won't go into the plot or details (several reviewers have done that already) but I will say that every book in this series is worth reading. I've recommended these books to several of my friends and each one came back to thank me for pointing them towards the series.

THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS is the third installment of the Thursday Next mysteries by Jasper Fforde, a clever set of novels about a Literary Detective in England in the 1980s (they are being published currently -- his fourth, Something Rotten, is coming out in paperback this summer). Thursday Next works for the British government's special operations checking out literary hoaxes. And in her adventures in the first installment, The Eyre Affair, she learns that people can move into books, and book characters can come out into the world. The second book, Lost in a Good Book, has her apprenticed to Miss Havisham (from Great Expectations) as a Jurisficition agent, policing books, book characters and general book order and safety from the Great Library. The Well of Lost Plots continues this line of focus with Thursday taking refuge from the world in a book from the Well, the place where books are placed if they are unpublished.

Thursday is living in a book, Caversham Heights, on a character-exhange basis. She is filling in for a book character named Mary, who wants a year off acting our her part in the book. Thursday, who is expecting her first baby with her eradicated husband, needs a place to flee the world while continuing her apprenticeship with Miss Havisham and awaiting her trial for a "fiction infraction" from the first novel, The Eyre Affair in which she changed the ending of Jane Eyre. Thursday learns different Jurisfiction skills, prepares for her certification exam, learns to use footnoterphones to communicate, councils generic characters on how to become more multidimensional, tries to fend off the memory-attacking skills of Aornis Hades, the sister of Eyre Affair's villian, Acheron Hades, endures her trial, and waits with the rest of the book world for the introduction of UltraWord(TM), the new book system that the Council of Genres is developing. There's a lot going on here.

And yet the book is very difficult to get into, since it's really just one darn thing after another for more than half of it. While some of the threads come together at the end in a page-turning climax, a lot of it just seems to be Fforde being clever (just because you can think of something clever, doesn't mean it should get its own chapter). The way he depicts the book world is interesting and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, but the purely episodic plot for most of this book makes it the weakest of the three we've read so far.

I hope Something Rotten has a little more plot, and I also hope some of the continuing unresolved items get tied up in the next one. I guess I called this a series of mysteries, but really, these three books could all be one large novel. But if it were, we'd still be waiting for the end...

Jasper Fforde's third installment in the Thursday Next series, "The Well Of Lost Plots," details Thursday's exile inside Jurisfictions Great Library. After her husband and father of her unborn baby was eradicated by Goliath and the ChronoGuard, Thursday joins the character exchange program. Hoping to hide out from the evil Goliath Corporation and have her baby in peace (while formulating a plan to un-eradicate her husband), Thursday switches places with a character inside The Well of Lost Plots (a place for abandoned books). Mystery and mayhem ensue when Thursday and her mentor Ms. Havisham happen across several bookworld murders and a sinister plot to destroy book reading as we know it!

I cannot express how much I love the Thursday Next series. Fforde's writing style and wit is unparalleled. Genuine lovers of fiction cannot help but to fall in love with Fforde's characters and the subtly nuances of fiction that he employs. These novels are definitely for the reader who has wondered what it might be like to have a conversation with Heathcliff from "Wuthering Heights" or Jane Eyre. I highly recommend this series.

In the postmodern era of British humor/fantasy, Jasper Fforde is its most overrated practitioner. Too many have hailed him as the heir apparent of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, but Fforde possesses neither their blazing originality or narrative dexterity.

While the best of the series--"The Eyre Affair" and "Something Rotten" are entertaining, one is always conscious that Fforde is trying to emerge from the shadows of Adams and Pratchett by tossing in as many cleverly warped ideas as possible. But this is just self-conscious riffing.

In "The Well of Lost Plots," Fforde's very evident limitations as writer and narrator become readilty apparent. Its tedious story takes places entirely in the literary netherworld. The 'plot,' such as it is, is little more than a patchwork of episodic setpieces. You can almost imagine Fforde conceiving this in terms of the inevitable movie or BBC series that will be made out of these books.

The shallowness of this well would be somewhere more palatable if there were any signs of development in Thursday Next's persona. But there aren't She's still the self-absorbed waif she was in the first two books. Truth to tell, in satire character development isn't always necessarily, but when a masters like Pratchett can create characters of amazing complexity on a world that rests on the backs of four elephants riding a giant turtle, it seems a bit odd that Fforde is incapable of bringing any dimension to Thursday. Speaking of Pratchett, it's rather amazing to see how transparently Fforde bases the climax of this story on a rather transparent appropriation of a climactic scene from "The Wee Free Men."

If you're going to read the series, you'll have to get through this at some point or another. It's tough going, but the payoff is that Fforde rebounds nicely with the next Thursday novel, "Something Rotten." Tread into this well, but not too deeply.

I enjoyed this book, though found it harder to get into then the rest. It takes a while for a real mystery/plot to show up. Even though background is given within the story I would highly recommend you start with The Eyre Affair and read the Thursday Next series in order.

Fforde is a fantastic writer ! Like they say: a true original ! His imagination is bottomless... his explanation terrific.
Maybe you are under the impression that you could actually write a book ? Read Fforde and you will discover that it is quite impossible ! It all happens in the Well of lost Plots and they just make the "author" believe he invented it all himself...
Read about the inventions that made reading possible: OralTrad, SCROLL, BOOK,...
Escape in a whole new world, and try not to get lost...