Jasper Fforde’s The Fourth Bear, the second book in his “Nursery Crimes” series and sequel to The Big Over Easy, is a typical Ffordian romp through an alternate universe populated by nursery-rhyme characters, aliens, and talking bears (indeed, the battle over whether they can carry weapons to protect themselves from hunters – the “right to arm bears” – is an ongoing theme in the book), full of wordplay and allusions to works of adult and children’s literature.
Jack Spratt, the head of the Reading police department’s Nursery Crimes unit, finds himself suspended before this case has even gotten underway, due to the unfortunate recent incident when Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother were both eaten by the Big Bad Wolf (both survived but have suffered psychological trauma), leaving him somewhat hampered in his efforts to track down what happened to Goldilocks. He’s not sure what this has to do with an explosion in a greenhouse that held a nearly fifty-kilogram cucumber. And he happens upon a porridge-trafficking scheme in the ursine community that may or may not be tied to some highly-placed officials.
The Fourth Bear has fewer out-and-out laughs than the books in the Thursday Next series, but it’s full of humor, both highbrow and silly. The cucumber storyline leads to a series of puns that I won’t repeat because they’d spoil a good chunk of the plot. Anything involving Ashley, the Rambosian alien whose native tongue is binary and who harbors a secret crush on his colleague Mary Mary, provides comedy value because of how literally he interprets everything he’s told and because of his odd fascinations with things like pirates, elephants, and 1970s television series. The characters occasionally break the fourth wall, observing the coincidences and plot clichés that Fforde employs to keep things moving. And there’s an allusion to Rebecca for those of you who miss the more highbrow references of the Thursday Next series.
Fforde’s storycraft has improved with each succeeding book, making The Fourth Bear a smoother read. As usual, three or four different storylines converge towards the end of the novel, but the way the cucumbers, Goldilocks, the porridge, the three bears, and a World War I-reenactment theme park come together was tighter than similar sequences in previous books, where it was harder to see how anything would come together until a few seconds before everything actually did. Fforde weaves the various investigations together, sometimes having them cross paths within the story and otherwise simply having Spratt and the DCI investigating multiple crimes at once, as opposed to his more standard method of jumping from one story to another. It makes for a tighter read, and it’s a style he should take back to the Thursday Next books, which just entered their second four-novel cycle.
Keith:
I know you enjoyed Khaled Hosseini’s THE KITE RUNNER, but I was wondering if you’d had a chance to read A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS? Personally, I felt that his second book was better, in virtually every respect, with the readability improved over THE KITE RUNNER’s already very accessible prose. The story is incredibly compelling, with characters that you become invested in virtually as soon as they are introduced.
Jeremy – not yet, but I’ll pick it up as soon as it’s in paperback.
Keith-
Have you read any Christopher Moore or Tom Robbins? If you enjoy the goofy elements of Jasper Fforde you’ll probably enjoy both of them. The writing is excellent and the stories always flow in a way that has you accepting without question whatever bizarre events are occuring. I thought Moore’s best were “The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove” and “Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal” while Robbins’ masterpiece is “Still Life with Woodpecker.” Worth checking out!
I haven’t read any Moore although you’re not the first to recommend it – I read a book called Foop! by Chris Genoa that Moore apparently liked; it was clever and funny in parts, but the ending fell flat. I’ve read one Robbins book, “Jitterbug Perfume,” impressed by the complexity of his writing but found the book to be extremely preachy. Anyway, thanks for the reminder on Moore – for whatever reason I keep forgetting that I mean to read something of his.