SHADES OF GREY bY JASPER FFORDE
Published by Hodder and Stoughton / January 1, 2010Jasper Fforde has to be one of the most intriguing authors writing fiction today, his First Among Sequels series is pure delight whilst his new book Shades of Grey ups the ante even further.
In an Orwellian vision of a country far in the future people have stopped seeing colour in all its varied wonderousness and instead are reduced to being able to see just one colour (some poor people, the Greys, can't see any colour at all). There is a strict heirarchy in this strange new world where the more colour perception you have the better you'll get on. 20 year old Eddie Russett has been ordered to go with his father (a colourman - a kind of medic able to fix people up by mixing up different colour swatches!) to the outer fringes town of East Carmine - where they do things a bit differently, in order to learn a little bit of humility after it is discovered he has been thinking for himself a little too much.
Within minutes of arriving in East Carmine Eddie quickly realises things are not as they seem especially when he meets and immediately falls in love with an anarchic Grey called Jane, who just happens to be one of the leading lights of a growing resistance movement out to bring about the downfall of the bizarre system of Reboot where recalcitrants are sent to the "Emerald City" never to be seen again.
Incredibly hard to catagorise and do justice to its complex and involving plotline but it is a supremely inventive and enjoyable slice of storytelling. Fforde has pulled off the classic job of making a totally unbelievable world entirely believable. Something has clearly happened to the Earth as we know it and hundreds of years down the track but there are still lots of remnants of life as we know it - apart from a severe lack of spoons.
It might only be January but I think we've already found one of our books of the year. Don't miss this and we already looking forward to further Russett tinged adventures!
back to books | home
