I would be lying to you if I said that I completely understood all the nuance and subtext to be found in this book. Indeed, the entire Thursday Next series, from its first installment, 2001’s The Eyre Affair, to this latest assault on my apparently witless faculties, One of Our Thursdays is Missing, has often thrown zingers my way that I simply have not caught immediately, if at all. Now, I like to think of myself as a relatively intelligent person; my vocabulary is pretty broad as are my interests, and I just… I know things. Most of this knowledge comes as a result of having spent a goodly part of my life immersed in literature, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, and from which I have always emerged relatively clear-headed and informed. I’ve grown complacent -- perhaps even a little arrogant. I am just so used to getting stuff. (Well, not Proust. But does anyone get Proust?)

Jasper Fforde, in his inimical and yet resplendent manner, makes me feel like I only know enough to know that I know nothing. I read his works -- in particular, this one -- and always enjoy myself hugely, but it is not only because I am glorying in his clever wordplay and enchanting worlds of fantastical oddity. There is more to it than that. I think a big part of what I love about his books is that I feel like there is something more there than just the engrossing, amusing and genre-busting delight that is on the surface. That there is some great discovery or profound truth to be found within; a truth I’m on the cusp of grasping, if only I keep at it.

But in the meantime, what’s on the surface layer -- indeed, layers; this book has so many layers it’s practically Inception-y -- is more than enough genius to be going on with.

In case you’re unaware, the series’ titular heroine Thursday Next was introduced to us as a detective working for Spec-Ops (Special Operations), in the Litera-Tec Branch based in Swindon, Wales. Essentially, she and her colleagues would track down and prosecute master criminals responsible for book-related crime -- of which there is a lot in Thursday’s version of reality. There, classic authors are not just revered by scholars, they are the basis of gangland violence; Forget Team Jacob and Team Edward, this is Team Bacon and Team Shakespeare, and that shit is serious.

Much else is altered in Thursday’s alternate Earth (ie. the Crimean War still rages and croquet is a globally televised, passionately-followed sport), but it is really the book stuff that is important, for it is the book stuff that led her, lo these many years ago, to the discovery of the BookWorld.

The BookWorld is… well, another plane of existence, I guess, in which literary characters lead ordinary lives in between fulfilling their written roles. There is a government, and a police force, and a Way Things Are Done, and it is here that Thursday has had some of her most exciting and addlepated adventures. It is also here, in One of Our Thursdays is Missing, that we find a new Thursday, a softer, gentler yet no less incisive Thursday, who is drawn into a tangled web of inter-genre intrigue and attempted murder when she discovers that -- gasp -- the Real Thursday is missing!

This alternate Thursday (she’s the written form of the original, whose life story in Spec-Ops has been fictionalized -- yes, it hurts my head, too) is at first reluctant to make waves, but she slowly finds herself becoming more and more involved in various machinations afoot both in the BookWorld and outside it. She has a beau, Whitby, who is doomed by a false backstory; she has a hopeless love for Landen, Thursday’s RealWorld husband; she has to deal with a rebellious cast of fellow BookPeople from within her biography home; and she has a robot butler named Sprockett, who is one of my favorite Fforde creations ever. It is such a treat to see a well-known character so utterly reinvented and yet be so true to the original concept of the series, and by the end of this book, WrittenThursday is so beloved and engaging that you almost hope RealThursday stays missing.

Packed full of sly references (see above quote), exploring big themes like self-determination, personhood, bureaucracy, politics and warfare -- plus, fanfic! -- and just generally being all around bewilderingly entertaining, Fforde’s latest addition to Thursday’s mixed-up craziness is another triumph of originality and wit. And if the mines of metaphor and the seas of grammar confuse you, then don’t worry: you are assuredly not alone. But if they do not, if this all makes perfect sense to you, or you have deciphered that Ultimate Ffordeian Truth of which I am not yet fully cognizant… please, don’t tell me what it is. Looking for it is half the fun.

   -- Rachel Hyland