Thursday Next, The Woman Who Died a Lot by Jasper Fforde: Memories, dementia and the stories we tell

Jasper Fforde’s series of books about Thursday Next is perfect reading for book nerds who love a bit of fantasy, a lot of humour and a thought-provoking insight into our own world. I think The Woman Who Died a Lot is probably one of the best, giving me plenty of food for thought about memory, dementia and the stories we tell about ourselves.

By coincidence, this is the second book in a row I have read with a younger character called Phoebe. In ‘Christine Falls’ by Benjamin Black (a pseudonym of John Banville), she was the 19-year-old niece of Quirke, the main character. In ‘The Woman Who Died a Lot’, she is a keen young detective, Phoebe Smalls.

What’s next for Thursday Next?

“All my decisions will be forgotten eventually, but it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t make the right ones.” Thursday Next, (p.333).

This is a book both absurd and thought-provoking. Where public buildings are sponsored and named after companies, including their slogans such as the Lola Vavoom Discount Sofa Warehouse See Press For Details Memorial Hospital. Where the most evil mega corporation of all is the Goliath Corporation.

At the start of the novel, our heroine, former literary detective Thursday Next is still suffering from the effects of major injury and about to be assessed by a psychiatrist for her next post. Assuming she is in line for head of SpecOps, she is downhearted to discover her ex-boss has her in mind for the new Chief Librarian. Mind you, she will be in close contact with the Special Library Service who wear “standard SLS combat fatigues, replete with the distinctive camouflage pattern of book spines for blending into library spaces” and would die protecting any book in the library.

In our world, the image of the librarian is stuffy and old-fashioned on the whole. Remember the librarian in Ghostbusters? In Thursday Next’s world, being a librarian is a cool and enviable job and “The SLS was the Special Library Service, the elite forces charged with protecting the nation’s literary heritage, either in libraries or in transit.” (p.95) I would love one of their T-shirts, ‘I don’t scare easily – I’m a librarian’. Where can I get one? The answer is in Jasper Fforde’s own online shop, wittily called after the Goliath Corporation that runs things in Thursday Next’s world: goliath-merchandising/librarian-ladies-fit-t-shirt.

“Working in fiction does give one a rather tenuous hold on reality, but it’s not the hold that’s tenuous – it’s the reality: which reality, whose reality, does it matter anyway – and will there be cake.” Thursday Next, in the psychiatrist’s chair. (p.34)

Does Jasper Fforde go into bookshops and turn his books face out and recommend them to browsing customers? Quite probably. Thursday Next does.

How the world really works

The wonderful thing about Jasper Fforde’s ridiculous take on local government and bureaucracy is that it completely explains real life. If everything becomes too well-organised, a Stupidity Surplus develops that has to be dissipated, so SpecOps’ new mission is “to generally overspend, change our minds about expensive technical upgrades, commission a plan to regionalise SpecOps with expensive state-of-the-art control rooms that we will never use, and inflate the workforce far beyond the realm of prudent management. And it is from this new culture of waste and mismanagement that we think de Poste hopes to achieve his Stupidity Surplus reduction target.” (p.44)

Dark Reading Matter and storytelling

Another of Fforde’s brilliant ideas is Dark Reading Matter. “Theoretical storyologists had calculated that the readable BookWorld makes up only 22 per cent of visible reading matter – the remainder is thought to be the unobservable remnants of long-lost books, forgotten oral tradition and ideas locked in writers’ heads when they died. A way to enter the Dark Reading Matter was keenly sought as it might offer a vast number of new ideas, plots and characters as well as a better understanding of the very nature of human imagination, and why STORY exists at all.” (p.61)

The Almighty has revealed himself to be real and the Global Religious Unification is now in a position to negotiate. “ ‘There has to be more to the ultimate meaning and purpose of existence than muddling through,’ said Tuesday with disdain. ‘Otherwise there’s no reason for the eternal quest for knowledge, and every reason for celebrity biographies and daytime soaps.’ “ (pp.80-81)

Memory, dementia and the stories we tell

“ ‘Damn,’ said my father, ‘all those memories, and none of them shared.’ “ (p.88)

Thursday’s father, having had a scandalous career at the now-defunct and deleted ChronoGuard, has manufactured memories of a happy family life which none of his family members share as they never really happened. In the book, this is contrasted with people with dementia who remember nothing of their past while their families remember all. I have to say I recognise the former state, too. I have happy memories of time spent with my children when they were young which they were too young to remember, something I hadn’t expected. On the other hand, my own father had a wealth of memories and tall stories we could never verify that have been passed on to me as somewhat hazy family stories.

Another example of Jasper Fforde’s logical explanations of the real world are the Mnemonomorphs – memory manipulators. “The stories we could tell, the things no one ever remembers. It could make your head spin. But if you’ve had that strange feeling that you’re in a room and you don’t know why, or felt that you should be doing something but can’t remember what, you can be pretty sure you’ve just had something erased.” (p.331)

The idea of memory manimpulation provokes interesting thoughts about memory. Is it important that all our memories are completely accurate or is it more important to remember how something made us feel, especially if the memory was good? This might be something we should keep in mind when dealing with people with dementia. Feeling is stronger than memory, so we should do all we can to make good memories then keep them alive by talking about them, looking at photos of happy times. And perhaps it’s worth doing our best to erase unhappy memories. If necessary, even to make false happy memories to cover them up because one day you or I may be the ones who have lost our memories and I’d like to think that the feelings I would have then would be happy ones and that anything that was sad will have evaporated.

Only believe the good stuff

Another moral lesson from this book is ‘be careful of what you wish for’ or, to be more accurate, what you believe in. Like Tinkerbell, who fades when children no longer believe, in this book, the probability of something happening is down to how many people believe it will. So the statisticians calculating the probability of an asteroid hitting the world and the journalists reporting their findings have a heavy responsibility. If the percentage goes up, more people will pay more attention and worry more and then the percentage will go up again until it becomes an inevitability. On the other hand, people have remarkably short attention spans, so they’re easily distracted by the next 5-minute wonder.

All in all, one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read by Jasper Fforde. And the standard is high, so that means this book comes highly recommended.

Further reading:

For extra features, including an interview with Jasper Fforde about the book and a discussion of why authors need to delete part of what they wrote: special features and deleted scenes

For a summary of characters and organisations: www.goodreads.com

For an interesting review by Cassie-la: www.goodreads.com

For a wonderful interview with Jasper Fforde: gulfnews.com/jasper-fforde-genre-is-the-measles-of-the-writing-world

Forged in Fury & The Final Reckoning: Jewish revenge for the Holocaust

Conspiracy theories, investigative journalism or an overactive imagination?

Forged in Fury by Michael Elkins. Is this fact or fiction? The truth or just a conspiracy theory? If a group of Jews had taken revenge on Nazis after WWII, we would have heard about it, surely, not least neo-Nazis, who would have a field day with it. The book is virtually unknown, even though it was written by a BBC journalist, Michael Elkins, coincidentally the first man to report on Israeli forces destroying Arab air forces at the start of the Six- Day War. CBS queried his report because they couldn’t believe it was true and he resigned once he got back to the US. It was true, but it does cast a slight shadow regarding his credibility.

This book tells the story of a group of Jewish men who were disillusioned by the large numbers of Germans and others who had actively been involved in Hitler’s Final Solution, but who had received little more than a slap on the wrist after the war. They decided to take matters into their own hands and to track down and execute people complicit in the Holocaust, forming an organisation that operated long after the war, known variously as Dam Yisrael Noter (‘the blood of Israel avenges’ or DIN (judgement), Nakam (meaning vengeance), Nokmim, Jewish Revenge or the Jewish Avengers.

The details of their plots to poison the water supply in major German cities came to nothing, fortunately. One of the men responsible for collecting the poison from Israel, Abba Kovner, was arrested, foiling the original plot. He later became one of the greatest poets of modern Israel, but was involved with Soviet partisans during the war and was an activist thereafter. The plot was scaled back and the group may have poisoned several hundred men awaiting trial in Stalag 13 in 1946.

Authors inspired by Jewish revenge stories

Of course, it could all just be a good yarn. Apparently John le Carré mentioned this book and the organisation in A Pigeon Tunnel (2016), a book of stories from his life; another reliable witness, one would think. Well-respected journalist Jonathan Freedman also based a book on the story under the pseudonym of Sam Bourne, The Final Reckoning (2008). Another account called The Avengers (1969) was also published by journalist and Knesset member Michael Bar-Zohar. The question is, are all these accounts true, or just the inspiration for a good yarn?

Conspiracy theory or fact?

I haven’t read Forged in Fury, but based on the few reviews available, it sounds like it starts like a thriller, then sinks into a mire of details and statistics, making it a hard read. So perhaps the subsequent authors were inspired by Forged in Fury, just like Dan Brown was inspired by The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail to write The Da Vinci Code. In fact, the excess of detail in Michael Elkin’s book makes it sound like a typical conspiracy theory backstory. There’s a fine line between investigative journalism and taking a few details and blowing them up into a full scale scandal, whether it’s true or not. You only have to look at Pizzagate and many quashed cases of libel to know that. Not every investigative journalist uncovers a truth like the Watergate Scandal (revealed in All the President’s Men)  and not every journalist is Bob Woodward. Who, incidentally, has just released a new exposé, Fear (2018) which we are predisposed to consider trustworthy because he was right about Nixon.

In the case of Forged in Fury, I am more inclined to view the claims with a pinch of salt because it was published so long after the fact, in 1971. Surely more would have been written about it if it was true? I am assuming Jonathan Freedman was indulging the urge to write fiction in his version, writing as Sam Bourne, a name imbued with conspiracy if there ever was one (thinking of Robert Ludlum’s Bourne Conspiracy video game).

In any case, I haven’t read any of the books about this subject and am inclined to read Freedman’s version if I do, but I’ll keep Forged in Fury because it’s a hard-to-find book, just in case I feel the need to find out more. I have to admit, I do like a good conspiracy theory.

Read more:

Background article by Jonathan Freedland: Revenge, The Guardian

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The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

A comedy about a man’s search for love that breaks all the rules of logic and hygiene. A light-hearted book about Don Tillman, a man with Asperger’s who decides it’s time he found himself a wife. Needless to say, he’s a geek who is clueless about relationships. What could possibly go wrong? And will he succeed? This is played for laughs and it delivers, but not everyone’s happy about the portrayal of autism. On the whole, though, an enjoyable read, as long as you don’t assume this is how every autistic person thinks or acts.

The other evening on the news, it was mentioned that approximately 10 % of people could now be diagnosed as somewhere on the autism spectrum. Not long now and it seems there will be no such thing as ‘neuro-typical’. Meanwhile, some forms of autism have now been taken off the DSM-V list of diagnoses of psychiatric disorders because not everyone who can be diagnosed experiences it as a problem. As Don Tillman says in The Rosie Project,

“Asperger’s isn’t a fault. It’s a variant. It’s potentially a major advantage. Asperger’s syndrome is associated with organisation, focus, innovative thinking and rational detachment.” (p.12)

It can cause all sorts of problems and disruptions, however. In Don’s case, it causes depression, but

“virtually all my problems could be attributed to my brain being configured differently from those of the majority of humans. All the psychiatric symptoms were of this, not of any underlying disease. Of course I was depressed: I lacked friends, sex and a social life, due to feeling incompatible with other people. My intensity and focus was misinterpreted as mania. And my concern with organisation was labelled as obsessive-compulsive disorder.” (pp.208/9).

From his family’s point of view, Don’s rigidness forces them to make all sorts of compensations to avoid causing unnecessary problems. This can cause major stresses within families. It doesn’t surprise me that Don’s mum cries at his 21st birthday party when his uncle tells too many “funny” stories about him. Being the mother of a neuro-atypical child can seriously dent your confidence as a mother, especially if their somewhat “odd” behaviour is interpreted as bad parenting. I speak from experience.

A comedy of errors

In fact, Don’s whole life is one long round of misunderstanding, misinterpretation and drawing the wrong conclusions. As a child, he assumed he would do what everyone else seemed to do: grow up, get married and have children, but as an adult he realises that this isn’t likely after all. Until his simple adherence to social rules in his friendship with the old lady Daphne changes his mind. He realises that intuition isn’t the only way to understand what people want and expect. That is when his social experiment begins: he wants to find a wife.

A question of questionnaires

Speed dating seems like the perfect non-social way to meet people, but not if you use a questionnaire (very efficient) and they know you have eliminated them after the first question.

The problem with questionnaires is that it’s also very difficult to define what it is you like, even if, like Don, you are very analytical. My husband, for example, thinks he likes tall blond women but married me, a short dark-haired woman. Likewise, he claims to hate minced beef, pasta and melted cheese but loves lasagna! People are not always in the least bit logical.

Empathy and feelings aren’t the same thing

I like the way Don (often correctly) analyses people’s motivations and ruses for trying to get him to do something. In this case, Gene suggesting he takes a prospective wife to the faculty ball. This reminds me of one of my online friend with Aspergers who often asks the most fascinating questions when trying to find out why people have behaved a certain way. Her analysis of the situation is usually spot on, but the inability to ‘feel’ people’s reactions makes her feel insecure. No more insecure, I suspect, however, than most people who check up with their friends about what they’re going to wear to a party. Note: he is perfectly able to feel his own emotions, so can be hurt by other people.

Don is painted as extremely logical. For example, he has no pictures in his apartment “Because after a while I would stop noticing them. The human brain is wired to focus on differences in its environment – so it can rapidly discern a predator. If I installed pictures or other decorative objects, I would notice them for a few days and then my brain would ignore them. If I want to see art, I go to the gallery. The paintings there are of higher quality, and the total expenditure over time is less than the purchase price of cheap posters.” He uses long words, extreme logic, scientific reasoning. Also, he remembers the exact date when he last visited the gallery. When he drives past his parents’ hometown of Shepparton, he doesn’t go out of his way to visit his parents, but does want to visit the town.

However, just as logically, Don is ready to learn from his mistakes. He does change the terms of his questionnaire in light of his experinces, though he usually frames this in terms of making different rules:

“Time has been redefined. Previous rules no longer apply. Alcohol is hereby declared mandatory in the Rosie Time Zone.”

Rosie says, “Any woman who takes that test is happy to be treated as an object. You can say that’s their choice. But, if you spent two minutes looking at how much society forces women to think of themselves as objects, you might not think so. What I want to know, do you want a woman who thinks like that? Is that the sort of wife you want?” (p.143)

“Problem Number One. My emotions were not aligned with logic.” (p.153) A problem most of us can empathise with.

This is a light-hearted book with plenty of ridiculous moments that portrays a man with Asperger’s sympathetically. It is rather jumping on the bandwagon of autism as entertainment, however. In the original Star Trek, Mr Spock acted like a sterotypical autist with his perfect logic and lack of emotion, but overreaction is often the thing that causes the most problems when dealing with autism. Autistic characters are now portrayed in mainstream programmes, but they are often portrayed somewhat as a sideshow. Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory is not defined as having autism, but that’s the way he’s presented and it’s often his awkwardness that triggers the comedy. Mind you, Sheldon is not above making the most of his peculiarities; he is also manipulative and definitely self-serving. There is also another TV show that I have seen in passing with a young ER doctor with (as far as I can tell) Asperger’s. In both cases, the level of awkwardness and the level of brilliance of the mind is much played up, though the doctor character is more sensitively portrayed. I’m not sure if all this publicity is necessarily helpful for individuals who are autistic themselves. As they are all individuals, I suppose this depends on their own beliefs and experiences.

The less stereotypical the portrayals become, the more people will be represented. This book is definitely on the ‘pop culture’ side of the coin, but it was very enjoyable. Mind you, I can’t help feeling that Don is no more awkward than the average teenage boy. His search for love is certainly a painfully amusing tale, and quite a page-turner, so I understand why this book has been so successful.

Have you read The Rosie Project? Did you enjoy it and have you read the sequel? Do tell!

Van Gogh in the Bookshop (Van Gogh en la librería)

No sooner had I started a book blog than a blogging friend who I have sadly neglected of late, published a book-related quotation from the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. And so it came to pass that I am reblogging it on my new Market Garden Reader blog. The original Dutch quotation is:
“Zoo dikwijls ook in het verleden heeft een bezoek aan een boekwinkel mij opgewekt en herinnerd dat er goede dingen in de wereld zijn.” (http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let133/letter.html)

Waterblogged

Quote of the Week / La cita de la semana:

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)

So often, in the past as well, a visit to a bookshop has cheered me up and reminded me that there are good things in the world.

Vincent Van Gogh: Letter to Theo Van Gogh, 30 October 1877

A menudo, en el pasado también, una visita a la librería me ha animado y me ha recordado que haya cosas buenas en el mundo.

Vincent Van Gogh: Carta a Theo Van Gogh, 30 de octubre de 1877

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Market Garden Reader

Who? What? Why? Where? When?

Probably my oldest obsession is reading. For as long as I can remember I’ve been a reader of anything and everything. And if I have to wait somewhere, I have to have a book with me because the idea of having nothing to read fills me with dread. Or, to be honest, boredom.

Usually I can remember what I’ve read. At least, I can recognise a titel I’ve read and most of the time, I can tell you if I’ve read something by a particular author. Don’t ask me to tell you the names of the characters, though, nor what happened. My memory doesn’t extend to that. Probably because I start a second book as soon as I finish the first one, my memories can be pretty hazy. So I need a way to remind myself of characters and plot and interesting thoughts that occur to me whilst reading. So what better way to record all this than by starting a book blog?

BookCrossing

Fortunately for me, I was never forced to write book reviews at school. Long essays with titles beginning ‘Compare and contrast the characters of…’, yes, but no book reviews. My first brush with the idea came when I joined BookCrossing, where members share books at meetings, by post and by leaving them in more or less random places as well as other shenanigans. If you are going to be passing on a book, it’s fun to  write a short review so the previous reader and the next reader can find out your opinion. Especially if you leave it for random strangers to find. Books can live lives of their own. I plan to write about that.

Goodreads

Next up, I joined Goodreads. It’s a great place to review your books or find other people’s opinions on books you’ve read or want to read. It’s possible to use it as a bookish social network, too, and you can follow friends old and new online if they post what they’re reading. You get to know friends’ taste and know if someone with a similar taste is enthusiastic, that’s a book you might like too. Especially if several friends love it. Great for recommendations and the perfect place to post reviews online.

Market Garden Reader is born!

The only problem is, my thoughts about books don’t confine themselves to the one I’ve just read. One book will spark off thoughts about another. For a while now, I’ve been thinking that I would like to start a book blog where I can keep more general information about books. Musings. Ideas. Connections. Links. When I’ve read two books in a row and see a strange and unexpected connection. Or I find an amazing quotation. Or I see something online that I want to save for future reference. What better place to keep it than a blog?

I’m still toying with the format and the design, so if it looks a bit odd or the same photo is included 3 times, upside down with a caption in Double Dutch, I apologise and will attempt to wrangle it into shape eventually.

This is my second blog. The first one, Integrated Expat,  is supposed to be about being a British expat living in the Netherlands, with background information for other expats and tales of living in another coutnry. Sometimes that’s just what it is, but often I get odd enthusiasms about some subject or another and want to write about it. So the subject matter is pretty random, but more often than not I manage to find a Dutch or expat angle. I expect to do the same here.

Why Market Garden Reader?

Why I have I decided to call myself Market Garden Reader. Well, there are several reasons:

• The reader part I’ve already explained
• I’m not just a reader, I’m a gardener, growing vegetables, fruit and flowers organically
• I grew up in Kent, the Garden of England, in fact the market garden of England
• I live in the part of the Netherlands where Operation Market Garden took place in the Second World War

Welcome along for the ride. Now to write some reviews and bookish musings!

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