What day is it? Its Thursday Next!

Are you on the lookout for a series of high-concept books that are very smart, very funny and demand knowledge of the classics like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights? Fear not, because I present you the great Jasper Fforde!

I discovered the books of Jasper Fforde rather late, only after the third in his famous Thursday Next series. Thursday Next, in case you are wondering, is the name of the central character in his metafictional books. She is a literary detective who wades in and out of books to fix literary problems.

His first novel, The Eyre Affair, offers a rather creative explanation of how the ending of Jane Eyre came to be the way it is today. If you have read Jane Eyre and disliked the way it wraps up, you have only Thursday Next to blame!

In The Well of Lost Plots, there are some amazingly funny scenes depicting Heathcliff and the entire cast of Wuthering Heights undergoing rage counselling as a part of group therapy. You can read more about it here.

His latest novel I read was Shades of Grey, a dystopian novel in which a person’s ability to recognize colour determines their social class.

To glean just a little idea of his writing, check out The Locked Room Mystery Mystery – a hilarious whodunit featuring the death of …The Locked Room Mystery!

Have you read any books of Jasper Fforde? Which is your favourite? Let me know in the comments below.