Thursday Next: First Among Sequels

by Jasper Fforde

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER• In this “hilarious [and] invigorating romp for all lovers of literature” (Associated Press), Thursday Next returns to rescue reading from certain destruction—again—the “mind-blowing” (The Seattle Times) fifth installment of the renowned Thursday Next series.
 
“[With a] furiously agile imagination . . . Fforde has shaken up genres—fantasy, comedy, crime, sci-fi, parody, literary criticism—and come up with a superb mishmash.”—The Miami Herald
 
Fourteen years after she pegged out at the 1988 SuperHoop, Thursday Next is grappling with a host of problems in the Book World: a recalcitrant new apprentice, the death of Sherlock Holmes, and the inexplicable departure of comedy from the once-hilarious Thomas Hardy novels. The Council of Genres is trying to broker a peace deal between certain antagonistic genres: Racy Novel has been recklessly placed between Ecclesiastical and Feminist, and they are at each other’s throats.
 
Meanwhile, back in Swindon, the government is reporting a dangerously high stupidity surplus, and Thursday’s idle sixteen-year-old son would rather sleep all day than follow his destiny as a member of the ChronoGuard. Not only does she captain the ship Moral Dilemma to the very limits of acceptable narrative possibilities, but Thursday also finds she must face down her most vicious enemy yet: herself.
 
Don’t miss any of Jasper Fforde’s delightfully entertaining Thursday Next novels:
THE EYRE AFFAIR• LOST IN A GOOD BOOK• THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS• SOMETHING ROTTEN• FIRST AMONG SEQUELS• ONE OF OUR THURSDAYS IS MISSING• THE WOMAN WHO DIED A LOT

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143113560
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/29/2008
Series:	Thursday Next Series , #5
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	270,274
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jasper Fforde spent twenty years in the film business before debuting on the New York Times bestseller list with The Eyre Affair, the first book in the Thursday Next series. He is also the author of Early Riser and The Constant Rabbit; the Nursery Crime Adventures series; the Shades of Grey series; and the Last Dragonslayer series, adapted for television as a movie. He lives in Wales.

Hometown:

Brecon, Powys, Wales, United Kingdom

Date of Birth:

January 11, 1961

Place of Birth:

London, United Kingdom

Education:

Left school at 18

Reading Group Guide

INTRODUCTION
It’s 2002, fourteen years after Thursday’s last adventure battling a rogue book character in the Outland. Swindon seems to have quieted down since the excitement of the 1988 SuperHoop. The politicians’ biggest concern these days is which act of idiocy would be the best way to spend the growing, unwieldy stupidity surplus. Thursday and her husband, Landen Parke-Laine, now have three children. Thursday has settled into a quiet, normal life, dropping out of the SpecOps and Jurisfiction games completely.

Or has she? The SpecOps units, formed to police the stranger crime elements such as supernatural and literary offenses, have officially disbanded; unofficially, however, they have gone underground, working quietly behind a business front that installs carpets across town. Despite her promises to Landen, Thursday has also been secretly policing the BookWorld with her Jurisfiction colleagues, and the death of Sherlock Holmes, the discovery of book probes, and falling Outland reading rates have put the BookWorld on edge.

In an effort to fill out the dwindling Jurisfiction forces, Thursday must mentor two apprentices—two very different doppelgängers born in the books written about her own life. One of them, Thursday5, is a hippie-dippy do-gooder from the fifth feel-good novel of Thursday’s adventures. The other, Thursday1–4, is an uncensored, oversexed gunslinger from the first four unauthorized novels. Thursday1–4 finally finds an opportunity to exact revenge on Thursday for her neglect of the factually challenged unauthorized series. As her first order of havoc-wreaking business, Thursday1–4, posing as the real Thursday, jumps into the Outland and into Thursday’s home. Before Thursday can reduce the rogue to text, Thursday1–4 steals her TravelBook, effectively locking her mentor out of the BookWorld completely.

Meanwhile, Thursday’s eldest child, Friday Next, is now a “grunty and unintelligible” sixteen-year-old. Friday is destined to become one of the ChronoGuard’s most respected and influential leaders—if Thursday can convince him to join in time to help invent time travel. Everyone in the Chronoguard, including a clean-cut overachieving alternate Friday, is campaigning to help her force Friday into the service of time. But if the real Friday knows his role in the invention of time travel, he’s refusing to give it up, despite threats to his existence.

While Thursday tries to find a way back into the BookWorld, her evil impostor gives the green light to a project that will rewrite the English classics, complete with audience call-in votes directing the story, starting with Pride and Prejudice. To save books from being turned into reality television shows, Thursday must turn to her sworn enemy, the Goliath Corporation. It has made progress on the Austen Rover, the first interliterary tour bus ever created. Goliath has solicited Thursday’s help to map the Rover’s entry into the BookWorld since, without it, they could easily wind up lost in the Nothing—vast, treacherous areas of abandoned Dark Reading Matter. But Goliath has ulterior motives in trying to jump into the BookWorld, and Thursday won’t find out until she’s trapped at sea in an excruciating moral dilemma. Can Thursday save the literary canon from decimation by creative democracy?

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Jasper Fforde opens his chapters with brief paragraphs taken from other imaginary books. What kind of book is quoted in First Among Sequels? What purpose does the opening paragraph of every chapter serve to illustrate?
 

First Among Sequels takes place in 2002, much closer to the present day than any of the previous Thursday Next novels. How is Thursday Next’s current world similar to our own? What parallels run between Thursday’s reality and ours?
 

Which would be more dangerous: the ability to tamper with time or the ability to tamper with the written word? Why? What kind of damage would a rewrite of the classics cause?
 

What is the stupidity surplus? What are some of the ideas proposed to use the stupidity surplus? Whom is Fforde poking fun at with the idea of the stupidity surplus?
 

What is Fforde’s concept of a “now” with a fluid length? How does a shortened “now” relate to the shortening of attention spans and the decline in reading?
 

Why does Anne Wirthlass imprison Thursday in a moral dilemma? Can you think of any books or oral traditions that would be worse prisons?
 

Thursday5 makes the following joke on page 330: “‘After you’ve drunk the long hot bath,’ she observed, ‘you’ll never have room for the martini.’” Why does she say this? Why does Thursday1–4 get it only when she’s in the core-containment room of The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco?
 

How does Fforde connect “OralTrad” with the BookWorld? What are some of the other literary traditions he refers to in his series?
 

In a meeting with the Council of Genres on page 204, Thursday says, “I say we place our faith in good stories well told and leave the interactivity as the transient Outlander fad that it is. Instead of being subservient to reader opinion, we should be leading it.” What does Thursday mean? Do you agree with her sentiment?

Editorial Reviews

Playful . . . It’s not hard to see what this enthusiasm is about. . . . It’s easy to be delighted by a writer who loves books so madly.”
—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“What keeps this series humming is Fforde’s lively engagement with books and the indefatigable woman he’s created to defend them.”
—People

“Richly crammed with jokes, ideas, and action. Brainier silliness is hard to find”
—USA Today

“The BookWorld seems to have encouraged Fforde’s rogue imagination to escape all fetters and really go wild.”
—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

“For the past six years, Jasper Fforde has been . . . churning out one impossibly winning book after the next about Thursday Next. You needn’t have spent half your childhood sitting up at night with a flashlight reading these books to enjoy First Among Sequels. What captivates here is something that will appeal to any reader—and that’s the feeling that there’s something at stake in fiction, that characters created in books are every bit as real as the memory of a person. Of all the Thursday books, this one is by far the most busily plotted, but Fforde’s greatest gift is on display. He beautifully captures that sense of embattlement which hovers over readers today in a world crowed with other forms of entertainment.”
—John Freeman, Newsday

“Bookworms looking for a new literary world to escape to after Harry Potter may find this a welcome addition to the bookshelf.”
—The Boston Globe

“An invigorating romp for all lovers of literature. In his 2003 novel The Eyre Affair, Fforde introduced readers to a futuristic world where books reigned supreme. Now, years later, [Thursday Next] is back, older, wiser, married with children and working for Jurisdiction, the policing agency that works within books. It’s not entirely necessary—though perhaps more fun—to read the books in the proper order. Fforde gives enough background in Thursday Next to inform readers of all they need to know to find both books hilarious, entertaining.”
—Kim Curtis, Associated Press

“First Among Sequels is so jam-packed with goofy jokes and shaggy plot lines that some readers may tire before the end. That would be a shame, since they’d miss the book’s exciting conclusion on the dangerous high seas of piratical swashbuckling. Argh!”
—The Seattle Times

“[With a] furiously agile imagination . . . Fforde has shaken up genres—fantasy, comedy, crime, sci-fi, parody, literary criticism—and come up with a superb mishmash with lots of affectionate in-jokes for any book lover. There’s a good chance the aptly titled First Among Sequels is the best of Fforde’s novels.”
—The Miami Herald

“Fforde really unleashes his imagination, and it knows no bounds, especially in reference to specific books, displaying . . . his ‘bibliowit.’ Despite all the allusions, illusions, neologisms, puns, and other literary sleights-of-hand, the reader comes to see that for all its futuristic, alternate-world shenanigans, First Among Sequels is a down-to-earth (well, sort of) cautionary tale about good and evil, as well as a family-centered love story about a good marriage.”
—The Washington Times

“Warning: Reading one of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next novels could, if you are not careful, have the effect of making other novels appear dull, uninspired, pedestrian, and predictable. Outright silliness . . . surrounded by strokes of inspired, demented genius. This is a novel with a deep love for fiction and a respect for how books, more than any other medium, can transform a life.”
—The Tampa Tribute

“Fans of satiric literary humor are in for a treat.”
—Knoxville News

“Reads like a well-edited Harry Potter; First Among Sequels is for adults who want sophisticated with their fantasy, but who still possess an appreciation for the intricate world-building of a well-imagined children’s novel. Canonical in-jokes abound. . . .What dedicated reader wouldn’t laugh at the suggestion of a parallel universe in which Jude the Obscure is renowned as a comic novel?”
—New Statesman

“What is most enjoyable about Jasper Fforde’s work is not its silliness—though there is plenty of that. It is admiring the skill that keeps all of those silly balls in the air. First Among Sequels does something as highly improbably as the life of its heroine: it continues to surprise and entertain. What makes Fforde’s work such fun is [his] unrestrained combination of wit and lunacy. Underlying that, though, is a love of a good story that rights true. It works magnificently.”
—The Denver Post

“Recommending Fforde’s novels is a bookseller’s dilemma. You can go on about literature-as-technology in popular culture in the Nextian world. . . . Or you can tackle his Nursery Crime series. But handselling First Among Sequels is easy. Just hand [the reader] a copy and tell them to read a couple of pages—and have plenty of earlier titles on hand, because you’ll sell them too!”
—Publishers Weekly

“Irrepressibly playful and relentlessly imaginative.”
—Adam Begley, The New York Observer

From the Publisher

What keeps this series humming is Fforde's lively engagement with books and the indefatigable woman he's created to defend them.
— People

John Freeman

Richly crammed with jokes, ideas, and action. Brainier silliness is hard to find.

USA Today

Playful . . . It's not hard to see what this enthusiasm is about. . . . It's easy to be delighted by a writer who loves books so madly.
— The New York Times

Janet Maslin

The BookWorld seems to have encouraged Fforde's rogue imagination to escape all fetters and really go wild.
— The Washington Post

Michael Dirda

Full of bizarre subplots, many of which don't go anywhere, bestseller Fforde's fifth novel to feature intrepid literary detective Thursday Next (after 2004's Something Rotten) blends elements of mystery, campy science fiction and screwball fantasy à la Terry Pratchett's Discworld. With the Stupidity Surplus reaching dangerously high levels all over England, Acme Carpets employee and undercover SpecOps investigator Next has her hands full trying to persuade her 16-year-old slacker son, Friday, to join the ChronoGuard, which deals with temporal stability; if Friday continues to sleep away his future, the end is near-for everyone. To complicate matters, a malicious apprentice begins making classic works of literature into reality book shows (Pride and Prejudice becomes The Bennets), a ruthless corporation tries to turn the Bookworld into a tourist trap, and the Cheese Enforcement Agency tries to bust Next for smuggling killer curd. The fate of the world may lie in a Longfellow poem. Fans of satiric literary humor are in for a treat. (July)

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Publishers Weekly

The fifth Thursday Next adventure takes place 14 years after the events of Something Rotten, and things have changed. The literary operative's young son, Friday, has become a slacker who refuses to accept his destiny as a member of the time-manipulating Chronoguard. Jurisfiction has been disbanded, leaving Thursday to carry on her duties under the guise of operating a floor-covering business. Worst of all, people have stopped reading because of the popularity of reality TV. Unlike the other titles in the series, First Among Sequelsdoesn't concentrate on a single literary classic, adopting a more scattershot approach that teeters on the edge of a lack of focus. Emily Gray reads without the energy she has shown previously. Despite such weaknesses, Thursday titles still attract an audience. Recommended for popular collections.
—Michael Adams

Library Journal

Thursday Next returns in another postmodern literary detective fantasy from Fforde (The Big Over Easy, 2005, etc.). Once again, the author creates a world in which only permeable boundaries separate truth from fiction, the living from the dead (or extinct: Thursday knits a sweater for her pet dodo, Pickwick). Our heroine revisits places and people from earlier Fforde novels, as well as from an immoderate number of English and American classics-one memorable page contains allusions to The Woman in White, Robert Ludlum, Jason Bourne, Our Mutual Friend, Bleak House and The Mayor of Casterbridge. Although the Special Operations Network has nominally been shut down, in reality Thursday works undercover with Acme Carpets and on the side runs an underground cheese market, featuring such tempting morsels as Mynachlog-ddu Old Contemptible, "kept in a glass jar because it will eat through cardboard or steel." Thursday embarks on a dizzying set of adventures through fictive territory. Untoward things have been happening in the literary world. For example, the natural comedy in Thomas Hardy novels has mysteriously been removed-Jude the Obscure originally began as one of the most "rip-roaringly funny novels in the English Language"-and Thursday travels through space and time to rectify this situation. Her contemporaries are not as interested in reading as they are in watching reality TV shows like England's Funniest Chainsaw Mishaps or Samaritan Kidney Swap. Meanwhile, Thursday has to deal with Friday, her teenaged lump of a son, whose main goals in life are sleeping and forming a band called The Gobshites. While Fforde's humor can be affecting, it can also grate with its self-consciousness, as theauthor nudges readers to admire his verbal dexterity. Vertiginous cleverness here proves to be almost too much of a good thing.

Kirkus Reviews