Book report: Shades of Grey, by Jasper Fforde

Well now, there’s a title. I’m dyslexic, so I had to read it twice before I realised it didn’t have the word fifty in front of it. Now, it’s always kind of weird when a story riffs on a title from a different genre … so it was relief to discover that Jasper Fforde published this first. Almost a relief, because it also made me ask the awkward question, why didn’t I ever hear of this novel before? Because this is, no doubt, original. Original with a capital O, the kind that monks would have painted with deranged, frolicking hares.

At first, I thought, this is silly, the glorious silliness of, say, Hitchikers’. It has an Adamsian grasp of the absurd. And then, as the social value of the colours set in, I thought in rapid succession of the Paranoia ttrpg, and then of the their-rules-are-not-our-rules worldbuilding of Flatworld. This latter, if I’m honest, I haven’t read since I was a child, so the comparison may be tenuous.

And then, as the mistreatment of the greys became apparent, it dawned on me that what I was reading was the Handmaid’s Tale, as it would be if Atwood had decided to replace all real-world prejudices with allegorical ones. After then, finally, my brain gave up on comparisons and let me accept Shades of Grey as its own thing.

Enough of my impressions, let me tell you about the story! Fforde conjures up a slowly decaying, somewhat British world in which colours, and particularly colour perception, control the social order.  People can see no colours at all, or a mixture of the primary colours red, green and yellow. That this is unscientific – it’s neither the natural ranges of our retinal cones, nor the subtractive cyan, magenta, yellow if printing – is never explained, but serves to underline the unnaturalness of the situation.

Those poor souls born without any colour vision are the bottom of the pecking order, known as the greys, and form a downtrodden underclass living in something like indentured servitude. Our protagonist, a ‘red’ by the name of Eddie Russett, travels with his father to backwater town. Society here is less well-oiled, and coming to grips with it give him fresh eyes through which to see the wider problems. And it doesn’t hurt that he’s totally smitten with Jane, a local Grey; She’s kicking back at her lowly place in the order. Eddie is both a fish out of water and our guide to this world, which is an impressive balancing act.

There’s a crime to solve, a backplot to put together, and world building to marvel at. And a government conspiracy too. Yet, at the same time, that’s just scenery to show the lively characters against. Almost everyone in the cast is larger-than-life, easy to laugh at or with, and to enjoy even as you are aghast at their selfish motivations. Fforde’s talent is that he makes you believe in, and care about, fictional people who in lesser hands might be considered one dimensional.

Shades of Grey is undoubtedly funny. It is also well told, with the backstory very cleverly revealed in a steady drip of tiny details that your hindbrain unconsciously assembles while your I-love-this story brain is busying itself following the action.

If you’re in the market for some really different dystopian fiction, this could be just the dash of colour in an uncaring universe that you’re looking for.