Shades of Grey A Novel

by Jasper Fforde

An astonishing, hotly anticipated new novel from the great literary fantasist and creator of Thursday Next, Jasper Fforde. As long as anyone can remember, society has been ruled by a Colortocracy. From the underground feedpipes that keep the municipal park green to the healing hues viewed to cure illness to a social hierarchy based upon one's limited color perception, society is dominated by color. In this world, you are what you can see. Young Eddie Russett has no ambition to be anything other than a loyal drone of the Collective. With his better-than-average red perception, he could well marry Constance Oxblood and inherit the string works; he may even have enough red perception to make prefect. For Eddie, life looks colorful. Life looks good. But everything changes when he moves with his father, a respected swatchman, to East Carmine. There, he falls in love with a Grey named Jane who opens his eyes to the painful truth behind his seemingly perfect, rigidly controlled society. Curiosity--a dangerous trait to display in a society that demands total conformity--gets the better of Eddie, who beings to wonder: Why are there not enough spoons to go around? Why is everything--and everyone--barcoded? What happened to all the people who never returned from High Saffron? And why, when you begin to question the world around you, do black-and-white certainties reduce themselves to shades of grey? Part satire, part romance, part revolutionary thriller, this is the new world from the creative and comic genius of Jasper Fforde.

• ISBN10: 0670019631
• ISBN13: 9780670019632
• Publish Date: 29 December 2009 (first published 31 December 1925)
• Publish Status: Remaindered
• Out of Print: 27 August 2015
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc
• Imprint: Penguin USA
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 390
• Language: English

Reviews

[Metaphorosis Reviews]

5 stars, Metaphorosis reviews

Summary
Ever since Something That Happened did away with the Previous, society has been organized on a strict class system based on how much of a color one can see. The Rules are strict - designated attire, specified hobbies and sports, and no complex technology (including, for reasons no one is sure of, manufacture of spoons). When Edward Russet and his father are transferred temporarily to the boondocks, Edward finds there's a lot more going on under the surface than he realized.

Review
Jasper Fforde is a bit of an inconsistent author, and seems to have trouble keeping his series on track. But when he’s writing well, he’s exceptionally good. Happily this (first of a series) book is one of the exceptional ones. It’s an odd world, and he gets away with a lot of handwaving, but it’s also intriguing, and he’s stocked it with a handful of engaging, interesting characters (along with many more stock figures).

Fforde specializes in the unusual, and sometimes with a tilt toward new adults, and this falls perfectly in line. He deftly introduces a world with rigid, written rules (such as no manufacture of spoons) and a class system based on how much of a color one can see, while also leaving us trying to figure out how the society works and where it came from. It’s at once a comedy, a light romance, an adventure, and a biting satire of aspects of contemporary society. It’s a weird mix, but I really enjoyed it.

I also plan to go on to the sequels - if there are any. Though this first book was published 15 years ago, confidently listing titles of two sequels, they're only now coming out, with one due this May (Red Side Story rather than the expected Painting by Numbers). I hope they're coming. I didn't read this with sequels in mind (I thought it was a standalone), but maybe I'm in luck.

[MurderByDeath]

I'm going to do a crap job of reviewing this, because there's just too much to say, but if Monty Python did a movie adaptation of Orwell's 1984, it would look just like Shades of Grey.  Unfortunately, as much as I love Fforde's writing, I loathed 1984.

Shades of Grey takes place many centuries in the future, presumably in what is the UK.  The world is run by the collective and people are ranked by what color of the spectrum they can see (and they can only see one).  Everyone bows to the infallible word of Munsell, but rather than being a technologically advanced society, the collective embraces a progressively severe form of ludditism (it's a word, I looked it up), where every set number of years they have a "leapback" where more and more technology is forbidden, and by tech I mean things like bicycles.  The MC, Eddie Russet, and his father are sent to the outer fringes of their world by the collective so Eddie can do a chair census and learn humility.  While there he learns a lot more than humility.

The writing is classic Fforde.  In my one and only status update for the book, I said it felt like I was trapped in a Dali painting; between the pure absurdity and the color centric society, it's still the most apt comparison.  Everything about the story is absurd, from the biggest threat to the collective being swan attacks, to the fact that it's illegal to make spoons but not illegal to own them.

I didn't like science fiction as a genre when I started this book and even though I enjoyed Shades of Grey as much as I possibly could given my total dislike of the premise, I still don't like science fiction.  But I want to be clear that this is not the book's fault: Fforde's writing is excellent, the story filled with absurd humour and a plot that sneaks up on you and leaves you stunned; this is the book that teachers should be using instead of 1984; students would learn the same lessons about the evils of communism and fascism and 'Big Brother' but enjoy it a hell of a lot more.

Weighing my bias against SF and 1984 in particular with the very excellent writing on Fforde's part, I split the difference and went with a three star rating.  This is the first of a trilogy and even though this one had an ending that left me sputtering, I doubt very much I'll read the rest.

[Hillary]

http://www.adventuresinneverneverland.com/2013/02/14/shades-of-grey-boy-jasper-fforde/

[Eve1972]

Enjoyed this one a lot more then I thought I would!