Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series

First of all, some explanation about Thursday's alternate universe must be provided. United Kingdom does not exists, England is a republic and the Whig Party is still in the Commons. Technologies are advanced to the point that dodos can be cloned, mammoths can live and Neanderthals have been resurrected. There is also the Goliath Corporation that has a great power and influence and that constitutes one the great enemy of Thursday and fair justice. 
 

Then there is a governmental force called the SpecOps which includes many branches that go from the “police of the police” to The ChronoGuard, the Office for Special Temporal Stability or the one that deals with vampires and werewolves. Among them stands the division in which Thursday works : Specops 27 – the literary detectives. But one question remains, who is Thursday Next ?

In 1985, Thursday, in her thirties is a former soldier in the still existing Crimean War. She is the daughter of a member of the ChronoGuard who does not exist due to his eradication, the niece of scientist whose craziness and genius reminds of Dr Emmett Brown's own genius and the future wife of a former soldier now writer who will also have his period of non-existence. Thursday becomes famous in her world when her greatest enemy Acheron Hades almost made Jane Eyre's plot collapse. Indeed, in Thursday's universe, people may travel into books thanks to her uncle Mycroft's creation : the Prose Portal. Moreover, books have their own police called Jurisfiction which is managed by characters from Literature as Miss Havisham, the abandoned bride from Dicken's Great Expectations.

Briefly, in the first volume of her adventures – The Eyre Affair - members of her family are kidnapped by Hades and entrapped into books. She eventually kills him. In the second volume – Lost in a Good Book - she becomes acquainted with Jurisficiton and learns how to be one of its agent. She also has to face the end of the world. In the third one – The Well of Lost Plots - she is pregnant, she does not remember her husband and hides in a book in the well of lost plots, a place in the fictional world, in order to remember him again. In Something Rotten, the fourth volume, Thursday brings to the real world the Shakespearian character Hamlet for an excursion and has to face a Minotaur aimed at killing her as well as a suspicious politician called Yorrick Kaine. The last volume to be found on bookshelves – First Among Sequels - sees Thursday dealing with her literary doubles as Jurisfiction potential agents, with convincing her son to be part of the ChronoGuard in order to save the future and with the group Goliath, still avid of control over the world. This was very brief and a lot of elements are missing but you can see how she has a full life.

If you liked British and American literature, you should read Fforde's novels as soon as possible. The plots refer to other literary works, tendencies and genres, as well as sub-plots or names do. But mostly Fforde's novels are filled with literary references scattered throughout the volumes. The characters may not be as developed as in great novels but Fforde's initiative is nonetheless pleasant to read. He plays with Literature and History, he has mixed up comic fantasy, detective stories and science fiction to deliver a crazily lighted and funny world in one collection. Have a nice trip in literature.

The Thursday Next Series

• The Eyre Affair (2001)
• Lost in a Good Book (2002)
• The Well of Lost Plots (2003)
• Something Rotten (2004)
• First Among Sequels (2007)
• One of our Thursdays is Missing (Announced for January 2011)

Nursery Crimes Division Series

• The Big Over Easy (2005)
• The Fourth Bear (2006)
• The Last Great Tortoise Race (Unknown)

Jasper Fforde

Jasper Fforde, an English novelist born in 1961, began a career in the film industry as focus puller, yet it seems it was not his vocation. Indeed, Mr Fforde became world-widely known only in 2001 with his first novel The Eyre Affair which actually is the first volume of his Thursday Next series. We do not have a great amount of information about his life and career, for the latter is very recent, but that he has a prolific mind full of surprises and humour.

The Thursday Next series star the eponymous literary detective and is setted in an alternate history where the SpecOps take care of the nation, where dodos are fruits of cloning or where Goliath Corp. represents the “evil people.” Eight volumes are expected and five are currently published.

Several sites are inspired from Thursday Universe and spread the Thursday “spirit.” You can go and see Goliath Corporation's website or even visits the SpecOps' website at 

http://www.thursdaynext.com/index2.html
http://www.specops.org.uk
http://goliathcorp.com/trough.html
http://www.jasperfforde.com/swindon/swindonalbum.html

In the middle of Thursday Next's adventures, Fforde has built another universe and series : Nursery Crime Division with a first volume entitled The Big Over Easy, in 2005. The subject and characters are derived from The Well of Lost Plots when Thursday hides in a book and works for the Nursery Crime Division. This year Jasper Fforde has come out another book we do not know much yet whose title is Shades of Grey.

Now Fforde kepts his readers waiting for numerous books. Unfortunately it has been said that he does not know when the sequels so much awaited will come out or even when he will write them. He leaves us on expectations, unfortunately. But in order not to leave Jasper's universe, take a look at his website at http://www.jasperfforde.com. It is original and funny, just like we may suppose he is.

Possession

The famous novel Possession depicts the journey and investigation of Roland Michell and Maud Bailey, two English scholars attempting to discover the true story about the supposed relationship between two fictitious Victorian poets named Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte.

The plot is set in the second half of the 1980s. Roland is an expert in Ash, Maud in LaMotte whom she is a remote heiress. While documenting on Ash, Roland finds two mysterious drafts of letters addressed to an unknown woman. The quest for truth may now begin. It turns out that the woman in question is another poet, the secluded Christabel LaMotte. That is how Maud Bailey joins him in his quest. At first she helps him kindly but then she becomes as enthralled by this story as Roland is. They feel like possessed by this discovery, eager to know what exactly happened between the poets. While they investigate, Maud and Roland seem to get all the more closer to each other that their subjects of inquiry get acquainted whence a new bond is created between their field of studies. Roland's discovery will baffle the profession and all what has been known about either Ash/LaMotte's lives, writings or Victorian period's conceptions. As a consequence of this breakthrough, many people will get interested by the letters and soon two enemies will face : greed and integrity -or truth.

Possession truly happens to be an amazing piece of literature doubled notwithstanding its most attractive plot for those who like either romance, literature or investigations. Antonia S. Byatt has not only interspersed Ash and LaMotte in Literature but has created a whole literary universe scattered throughout the novel. Her most impressive achievement is that she has involved in her narrative fictitious writings by these Victorian writers and also by contemporaries from both Ash/LaMotte and Roland/Maud's periods. The novel is indeed full of poems, tales, excerpts from autobiographies and diaries, and more importantly it is filled with letters standing among the “classical” narrative which are the main source of information about Ash and LaMotte. Along with this range of literary genres, the novel is partly a romance, partly a quest, partly a detective story and even involves hints at gloomy stories near the end. These genres mingled together are another proof of the literary master-handling of the author as she seems to sail from one to another without the mere difficulty. Mrs Byatt is, as I recently learned, a former lecturer in English hence her capacity to produce such works as poems or excerpts of supposed critical papers, a reading that may appear very obscure to people not accustomed to literary criticisms.

After the coming out of her book in 1990 she was awarded the Booker Prize. As a true recognition of her work, the website The Victorian Web presents the book in an extended way with many subjects upon it. What impresses me is that this contemporary book only dating from 1990 is analyzed as one of the major novels we still study nowadays.

The director of the brilliant Death at a Funeral Neil Labute has adapted Possession to the screen in 2002 starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Aaron Eckhart, Jennifer Ehle and Jeremy Northam as LaMotte and Ash. The novel has obviously undertaken many changes to end up in the film. Some of the scholars have thus been deleted as well as the solicitors and Roland girlfriend Val to allow, in a more easy way, the relationship between Maud and him. Besides, Roland is no longer British but American. It is a shift I do not completely understand though.

The emphasis is made upon the love stories between each duet though there were more stakes than merely a love story in the 19^th century. All the crucial elements are there, plus the fact that Maud and Roland are not that shy towards each other as in the novel. I think that the spirit of the book is luckily enough there even though it is exposed in radically a simple way. This story has enthralled me as to be as eager as our two modern heroes to know the true story of Ash and LaMotte. This movie has also moved me enough to make me want to study English and literature though at the time it was not as obvious as it is now. Now that I have read the original book, this want is increased though I can be nothing but impressed by this work.

The Expendables

LA CRITIQUE ÉCLAIR

Sylvester Stallone est un réalisateur prolifique quand il s'agit de s'attribuer le rôle titre et d'en faire une “petite” franchise, comme tels étaient le cas de Rocky, Rambo et maintenant de The Expendables. Autant l'avouer tout de suite, Rocky, Rambo et consorts ne m'intéressent pas. Néanmoins, le casting de The Expendables était très alléchant et le concept du film attractif. Ce n'est pas que j'aime les films testostéronés mais voir réunis certains des grands noms de l'action dans un film qui, à mon sens, sera bourré de second degré, est à ne pas manquer. Ils ne se prennent pas au sérieux et c'est la franche rigolade : boutades, références et auto-dérision s'allient au charisme musculaires de nos héros. N'imaginez pas que voilà LE grand film d'action. Il restera peut être dans les annales mais ce n'est pas par sa réalisation ou son scénario. On se moque presque de l'histoire ici. L'intérêt est de voir de l'auto-dérision, ainsi qu'un florilège de gros bras, de sang et d'explosions. Néanmoins, s'il n'y avait vraiment pas de second degré dans ce film, ça ferait peur autant pour le niveau du film que celui du réalisateur/scénariste.

Les dialogues ne brillent pas non plus par leur intelligence, mis à part peut être une scène sentimentalo-philosophique interprétée par Mickey Rourke et un discours «Cocktail»* par Jason Statham. Il faut dire aussi que la version française n'arrange rien, sauf à accentuer le second degré du film peut être. La caméra de Stallone est, malheureusement, trop nerveuse. Les plans en combat sont trop rapides et donnent un léger mal de tête. C'est dommage de ne pas mettre en avant les chorégraphies de combat, surtout celles de Jet Li, où les arts martiaux sont (légèrement) mis en avant. De plus, l'abondance de gros plans est, à force d'être usitée, étouffante pour les yeux et surtout pas esthétique. Sans parler du réalisme de certaines scènes, à commencer par le tatouage fait par Rourke! Il y a tout de même du positif : on rigole bien et LA scène du film avec ce bon vieil Arnold est un régal !

Au cas où vous vous demanderiez « Mais que peut bien signifier le titre? », une petite pause dictionnaire s'impose. Traduit, si vous penser de quelqu'un qu'il est « expendable », c'est qu'il ne vous est plus utile et que vous jugez pouvoir vous en débarrasser. (Collins Cobuild Dictionnary) Cela aurait pu être interprété comme un adieu au film d'action, mais avec le second volet en possible préparation, peut être pas...

* Sorti en 1988, Cocktail met en scène Tom Cruise en apprenti barman qui aime présenter publiquement ses productions poétiques spontanées.

Le Bruit des glaçons

LA CRITIQUE ÉCLAIR 

Comment vivre avec son cancer par Le Bruit des glaçons de Bertrand Blier.

 

C'est que la bande annonce était pour le moins alléchante. « Bonjour, je suis votre cancer » disait Albert Dupontel s'adressant à Jean Dujardin qui, un bac à glaçons dans une main, un verre de blanc dans l'autre, ne semble pas si décontenancé que ça. Comment résister à une intrigue si peu conventionnelle et à un duo d'acteurs millésimés? Véritable huis clos tragique digne d'une pièce de théâtre, Le Bruit des glaçons peut surprendre, voire même choquer. Ce n'est définitivement pas une comédie, même noire, mais un franc drame qui réunit un écrivain noyé dans l'alcool, sa gouvernante et leurs cancers.

Jean Dujardin endosse ici le rôle d'un homme sentimentalement meurtri qui n'a plus foi en rien mis à part sa bouteille de blanc. S'il a réussit dans l'écriture, il n'a pourtant plus goût à rien depuis que sa femme l'a quitté et vit maintenant reclus dans sa villa du sud de la France. Anne Alvaro joue la gouvernante, Louisa, avec une formidable retenue pour cette femme, secrètement amoureuse de son patron. Elle est la pierre qui fait que l'édifice ne chute pas, elle est le lien entre la « folie » de Charles et le monde extérieur, elle veille sur lui malgré ses propres tourments et notamment son cancer qui a refait surface incarnée par Myriam Boyer. Albert Dupontel est parfait dans le rôle du cancer : tantôt noir et professionnel, tantôt amical et curieux, c'est un personnage évidemment décalé qui reste toutefois dans son style, qui lui va si bien

Finalement, après les réflexions de Charles face à son cancer, le film prendra un tout autre air. Ce ne sera plus tant les discussions qui primeront mais des choix entre vie, mort, survie. Vont-ils s'abandonner à leurs cancers ou les combattre, et de ce fait trouver un nouveau sens à leurs vies qui se voyaient dans une impasse? Cela nous amène à plusieurs interrogation possibles sur le sens du film. Le cancer est il une punition, un ami, un moteur pour atteindre un fantasme? Et surement plus encore. Il n'existe qu'une façon de vous faire une idée.