The Well of Lost Plots

The Well of Lost Plots

Jasper Fforde

For Mari Who makes the torches burn brighter

A wise man wants for only nourishing cabbage soup; seek not other things. Except perhaps a toaster.

– from the teachings of St Zvlkx™

the wisdom of St Zvlkx™ is wholly owned by
the Toast Marketing Board

Acknowledgements

Extract from Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (copyright © Evelyn Waugh 1945) by permission of Peters, Fraser and Dunlop on behalf of the Evelyn Waugh Trust and the Estate of Laura Waugh.

Reference to the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling (copyright © The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty) by kind permission of A. P. Watt Ltd.

References to Shadow the Sheepdog by Enid Blyton by kind permission of Enid Blyton Limited and with thanks to Chorion pic.

Frederick Warne & Co. is the owner of all rights, copyrights and trademarks in the Beatrix Potter character names and illustrations.

Extract from Tiger Tiger (copyright © Alfred Bester 1955) by kind permission of the Estate of Alfred Bester and The Sayle Literary Agency.

This book has been bundled with Special Features including: the 'making of' wordamentary, deleted scenes from all three books, out-takes and much more. To access all these free bonus features, log on to: www.jasperfforde.com/specialfeatures.html and enter the code word as directed.

I

The absence of breakfast

'The Well of Lost Plots: To understand the Well you have to have an idea of the layout of the Great Library. The library is where all published fiction is stored so it can be read by the readers in the Outland; there are twenty-six floors, one for each letter of the alphabet. The library is constructed in the layout of a cross with the four corridors radiating from the centre point. On all the walls, end after end, shelf after shelf, are books. Hundreds, thousands, millions of books. Hardbacks, paperbacks, leather-bound, everything. But beneath the Great Library are twenty-six floors of dingy yet industrious sub-basements known as the Well of Lost Plots. This is where books are constructed, honed and polished in readiness for a place in the library above. But the similarity of all these books to the copies we read back home is no more than the similarity a photograph has to its subject; these books are alive.'

THURSDAY NEXT – The Jurisfiction Chronicles

Making one's home in an unpublished novel wasn't without its compensations. All the boring day-to-day mundanities that we conduct in the real world get in the way of narrative flow and are thus generally avoided. The car didn't need refuelling, there were never any wrong numbers, there was always enough hot water, and vacuum-cleaner bags came in only two sizes – upright and pull-along. There were other, more subtle differences, too. For instance, no one ever needed to repeat themselves in case you didn't hear, no one shared the same name, talked at the same time or had a word annoyingly 'on the tip of their tongue'. Best of all, the bad guy was always someone you knew of and – Chaucer aside – there wasn't much farting. But there were some downsides. The relative absence of breakfast was the first and most notable difference to my daily timetable. Inside books, dinners are often written about and therefore feature frequently, as do lunches and afternoon tea; probably because they offer more opportunities to further the story. Breakfast wasn't all that was missing. There was a peculiar lack of cinemas, wallpaper, toilets, colours, books, animals, underwear, smells, haircuts and, strangely enough, minor illnesses. If someone was ill in a book it was either terminal and dramatically unpleasant or a mild head cold – there wasn't much in between.