[Sundae]

In the Thursday Next series, Fforde usually manages to make me gasp and cry as well as laugh. And things that should be bluffs and easily resolved plot points really aren't. Someone really is dead, or missing. Fforde just throws you a few biscuits every now and then, where things really are joyfully resolved, the man shall have his mare again and all shall be well.

He can't hit me as hard as Kate Atkinson of course.
Where not only have I had to put the book down in order to cry properly, but the sadness has lived with me afterwards. Ditto Esther Freud, some of whose passages I think I know by heart now.

And yet both have made me properly laugh out loud, as well as snort, snigger and blow down my nose, which seems a method of expressing humour no-one else shares.