The Truth Works Well on the Stage." That was the headline of a February 6, 2007, article in The Times' weekly arts section The Friday Review, which noted the success of the London West End play starring Tom Hanks, based on Fforde's novel, The Man Who Couldn't Say No. The Times described the play as a "blatant rip-off" of The Eyre Affair, but the plot of the novel itself is similar to a short story in P.G. Wodehouse's 1919 novel Something New. Wodehouse once explained to a young fan that he had taken the plot of a short story from his next to last book, Something New, and had decided to make a play out of it because no one was willing to dramatize one of his books. "Perhaps I should have left it to your generation to see if you were clever enough to find out what had happened to the plot," he added. The Man Who Couldn't Say No features a hero who loses his memory. Reception The Guardian found The Eyre Affair and Flourish and Blunder "unmissable" and "marvellously odd". The Times'' described the book as "strange and unsettling, a perfect antidote to the ordinary day". The book was chosen as one of the books of the year by The Sunday Times and the New York Public Library listed it as one of the 100 best novels of the century. References External links Penguin Books: Page 1, Page 2 Category:Books by Jasper Fforde Category:British fantasy novels Category:2005 British novels Category:2005 fantasy novels Category:Metafictional novels Category:Novels about writers Category:Novels about diseases and disorders Category:Novels by Jasper Fforde Category:Novels set in the 1940s Category:Novels set in the 2010s Category:Faber and Faber books Category:World War II novels Category:Novels set in the Victorian era Category:Novels set in the 20th century Category:Metafictional novels Category:Dystopian novels Category:Literature featuring anthropomorphic characters Category:British novels adapted into films Category:British novels adapted into plays