Sophie's really bad and also currently incomplete "Summary" of The Sofa Book
@nobody33333333 Here you go
I'm putting this under the cut because Moth said he might want to read it at some point. Everyone else is welcome to my insanity.
Also, fair warning, because I'm really bad at summarizing things so there's going to be a lot of touch and go with how detailed this is
I found this book in a bargain book bin several years ago in a local grocery store and my mother bought it for me because I thought it looked interesting.
I was right.
But it is also so many other things.
And it has an unprecedented number of references to other media, namely The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and A Wrinkle in Time, by my count
So, there's these three kids: River, Freak, and Fiona. River's parents died in a car crash, when he was little, and that also gave him a limp. River arrives at the bus stop one day to find a sofa just. Sitting there. (It is worth noting that the sofa is coloured similarly to Mr. Benedict's green suit. And that there is a possible bloodstain on one of the cushions)
River's friend Freak is sitting on the sofa, and soon their other friend Fiona shows up. Fiona is the only one of the trio to have a phone, but she also refuses to be seen with the boys in public because "girls mature faster than boys and [she] really [needs] to be with people [her] own age" and she tells the boys not to take it personally, it's just that emotionally the boys are both six.
Fiona's a lot of fun.
She also constantly wears very strange outfits with extremely clashing colours. No one mentions this to her.
So, the kids deduce that the couch probably belonged to "old man Underhill" since it's technically outside his driveway. Fiona suggests looking for loose change in-between the cushions. They find a peanut shell, a gum wrapper, a plaid sock, a weird coin that has two different people's heads and words in an unknown alphabet, a green crayon labeled "ZUCCHINI", and a fishhook that River discovers because he jams his hand into the couch and gets stabbed.
They save all of these things "for posterity", which is a good thing because Fiona then finds out that there are collectors out there who will pay a lot of money for it so she sets up an online auction.
Background information that is important: The town they live in (Cheshire) backs up to a coal-seam fire wasteland called Hellsboro, which has been burning for twelve years and was caused by some kind of accident at the Rodmore Chemical plant, the abandoned building at the center of Hellsboro. The three kids are the only people who live in the houses near Hellsboro, and the rest of the city is several miles away.
Also, phones and other technology are sold by the company Disin Tel, and basically every food is made by Agra Nation. And there are huge town-wide flash mobs that happen every so often, which the participants deny ever happening. This is a common argument with the kids as Fiona takes part in the flash mobs and the boys are annoyed she keeps pretending it never happened.
The crayon auction has now jumped to over seven thousand dollars, and the kids are freaking out. The bidding war is between GORLAB and Alecto, but River points out that technically they don't own the crayon, and should check with Mr. Underhill first.
They end up speaking to him through a speaker in the front gate of the Underhill house, at which point we discover that this man is, in fact, not Mr. Underhill. Mr. Underhill died at age 97 in a tobogganing accident. This guy is named Alf.
They mention that they found the crayon in the sofa, to which Alf replies "Oh, that sofa. I was wondering where it had gotten to. I didn't realize if was missing until yesterday even when I tried to sit down. Imagine my surprise."
Alf also references the fact that his pneumatic mail slot apparently ate the mailman's hand, but that's not relevant.
Alf suggests they meet after the kids get out of school to discuss the mattter (Dropping a few very specific details about the kids' lives that he has no way of knowing), and the kids agree.
River gets back to the gate early, and takes a nap on the sofa. He has a very strange dream involving his irritated and pedantic English teacher wearing a suit made out of the sofa upholstery. This is not, in fact, his English teacher, but rather "the sofa's spokesperson".
There is then a very confusing explanation about a place called "Indorsia" that is described as being like a landscape "on the inside surface of a giant, hollow sphere", which is where the sofa's from.
The sofa is a piece of "smart furniture", which means it "keeps itself clean; it digests stains; it can change its color to match the drapes" and also it grows from small, sugar-cube-like objects. This "makes it easier to pack if you're being pursued by storm troopers".
It takes a year for the sofa to grow to full size, and this sofa in particular has nanotech factories in both armrests, which can copy small objects once given a sample. (Such as replicating spare change)
Also, (And here you are, Bods) the sofa is the only entity in either their world or Indorsia to have the ability to tesser
This means it can teleport, with a maximum range of two miles and the need to recharge, but nonetheless quite impressive as it figured out how to do this on its own.
And it powers itself to do all these things by eating dust bunnies
AND WE'RE STOPPING HERE FOR TONIGHT BECAUSE I NEED TO GO EAT. I WILL TRY AND FINISH LATER, IF ANYONE'S INTERESTED :)
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