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Book Summary and Reviews of The Woman Who Died A Lot by Jasper Fforde

The Woman Who Died A Lot by Jasper Fforde

The Woman Who Died A Lot

A Thursday Next Novel

by Jasper Fforde

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  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • Published:
  • Oct 2012, 384 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

The Bookworld's leading enforcement officer, Thursday Next, has been forced into a semiretirement following an assassination attempt, returning home to Swindon and her family to recuperate.

But Thursday's children have problems that demand she become a mother of invention: Friday's career struggles in the Chronoguard, where he is relegated to a might-have-been; Tuesday's trouble perfecting the Anti-Smote shield, needed in time to thwart an angry Deity's promise to wipe Swindon off the face of the earth; and the issue of Thursday's third child, Jenny, who doesn't exist except as a confusing and disturbing memory.

With Goliath attempting to replace Thursday at every opportunity with synthetic Thursdays, and a call from the Bookworld to hunt down Pagerunners who have jumped into the Realworld, Thursday's convalescence is going to be anything but restful as the week ahead promises to be one of the Next family's oddest.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. 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

"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. " - Publishers Weekly

"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

This information about The Woman Who Died A Lot was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Cloggie Downunder

Another brilliant read.
The Woman Who Died A Lot is the seventh book in the popular Thursday Next series by Welsh author, Jasper Fforde. Some two years after her last (almost fatal) adventure, Thursday Next is still slowly recovering, but when Swindon’s council decides to offset their Stupidity Surplus by reforming Spec Ops, she is eager to head SO27, the Literary Detectives. That job goes to Phoebe Smalls, young, smart and enthusiastic; Thursday is offered Chief Librarianship of the Wessex All You Can Eat At Fatso’s Drinks Not Included Library Services. But this seemingly boring job does not keep Thursday out of the action (in a world where libraries are treasured and librarians have power!) The vengeful Deity is intent on smiting the sinful, and Swindon is the target in 4 days’ time (sixteen-year-old Tuesday is working on perfecting an anti-smiting technology in between school and researching Dark Reading Matter); Goliath are definitely up to something as their synthetic copies of Thursday are becoming increasingly sophisticated; mysteriously, rare and ancient codices by St. Zvlkx are being vandalised. As if that’s not enough, with the Chronoguard now defunct, eighteen-year-old Friday’s purpose in his life is revealed by a Letter of Destiny: he will murder Gavin Watkins and spend 30 years in jail. Jack Schitt and Aornis Hades make unwelcome reappearances, and fans of Fforde’s Last Dragonslayer series will recognise the Blessed Ladies of the Lobster. Thursday gets a tattoo, Tupperware is put to unusual use, Enid Blyton fundamentalists make threats, Imaginary Childhood Friends and ninjas prove their worth in scientific research and Thursday’s dodo, Pickwick makes an enormous contribution. Fforde introduces the novel concept of global expectation affecting future events and explains senior moments and the Aldi grocery chain. As always, chapters are prefaced by helpful quotes from biographies, journals, books and articles. Another brilliant read.

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Author Information

Jasper Fforde Author Biography

Jasper Fforde was born in London on January 11, 1961. His father was a prominent economist, while his mother did charity work and was a passionate reader. Fforde and his four siblings were raised in London and Wales. At the age of twelve Fforde was sent to Dartington Hall School, a progressive coeducational boarding school near Totnes, Devon, which he attended until his graduation in 1979.

As a child, he shared his mother's love of reading, and by the age of eleven, had become quite interested in film and television. While the young Fforde liked to watch Monty Python, he was particularly influenced by a commercial he saw for milk starring actor Roger Moore. It showed what happened behind the scenes on a production set, and this commercial inspired Fforde's aspirations as a movie ...

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Name Pronunciation
Jasper Fforde: Ford

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