Jasper Fforde is the author who wrote the Thursday Next series, and if that doesn’t tell you anything and you love, or even only like, literature, then you should read: first “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte, then “The Eyre Affair” by Jasper Fforde.

Then come back here.

Ready?
That was great, wasn’t it? Particularly the moment when… ah… no spoilers.
But now back to Shades of Grey.

So: if you are alive and human then you have heard of “50 Shades of Grey”, the book/film that tickled the world’s fancy. That was not from Jasper Fforde. But there was another book called “Shades of Grey”, only two short years before the “50”, which was written by that same Jasper Fforde who wrote about Thursday Next.

Colour is Everything

Shades of Grey is set in a future dystopian society, long, long after today and long after the calamity that destroyed us. The land, on the territory that once was Great Britain, or rather parts of it (especially Wales of course) is now called Chromatacia, and it has a strict societal hierarchy of how much colour a person can see, because most people can see only one hue, or none at all. What colour you can see determines your career and how high you can ever rise, it determines how much you earn, where you can live, and how much respect you get.

Because of that, people attempt to marry right, that means, marry someone who can see a good fitting colour, so their children may have a shot at advancing upon the societal ladder if they inherit the right genomes and see more of some hue. And colour names are everywhere.

Peculiarly, they are also very susceptible to seeing particular colours, to the point where seeing the wrong colour can hurt a person, drug someone, or heal. The protagonist’s father is a “swatchman”, basically a doctor, only someone going around with a sort of selection of coloured cards, like interior designers or graphic designers of the print persuasion today.

Protagonist Eddie Russett is a “Red”, because he can see that. “Red” is pretty common, so his father and he are not very cool; only “Greys” are worse: people who are completely colour blind. The families are fixing him to marry Violet de Mauve, because she hopes that his particular Red-susceptibility will get her children closer to full Purple, a very desirable outcome for the family. Eddie likes Constance though … although she is also Red and that is not a great match if you think all genetics and no heart.

But then he meets another girl: Jane, a Grey, a troublemaker and misfit who opens Eddie’s eyes — not to more colour, but to more truth, namely that the gouvernment isn’t all that benevolent, rather, even more dystopian than it was already appearing.

True Colour

Why did he write that book? Apparently because he got inspired by the true fact that colours, if they exist at all, are not what we really see. Our impression of colour is the impact of light particles on the retina, leading to electric impulses which our brain interprets as a visual experience. This visual experience is only in our heads though… just like sounds, which are simply little bones in our ears banging on each other to move some hairs that lead to electric impulses.

So what is even out there in our environment? How does the world look, or we, etc?

I don’t know, and neither do you. Or anyone.

Spooky?
It gave us a thrilling book.
And now it gave us another!

Sex or Colour?

Because yes: after 50 Shades people were rather doubtful if a “Shades of Grey” story that is focusing on future dystopian societies instead of sex could hold a candle against the lighthouse of forbidden pleasures in the basement of a millionaire’s home. People like to be millionaires, and they like forbidden pleasures, and if they can’t be millionaires themselves they would gladly take the opportunity to experience forbidden pleasures with them. But they don’t quite like future dystopias as much.

I myself happen to have had the good fortune … what? no! not what you think. I did NOT experience forbidden pleasures with millionaires! tsk, tsk.

Instead, I had the unexpected good fortune to online-meet Mr. Fforde at a video conference and ask him about this thorny problem. Sadly, he didn’t sound very hopeful at the time.

Sad, because Shades of Grey did not finish the story.
It was always “only” a part 1; setting a grand stage and introducing a big problem, and a personal problem on top of that. They made a plan….

And that’s it!

And for several years it looked as if that would be it forever, despite that great note in the back:

Neither of which ever happened.

However, it turned out that the story had more stamina than expected: In the shadow of “50”, even the normal “Shades” were still read. Year after year after year, people bought it and read it and liked it, and wrote to Jasper Fforde, asking, like I did, about the next installment.

Until no-one could deny that it lived on, and that enough people would be interested to warrant a print run and everything associated with it.

And thanks to these fine people who bought the book and wrote the letters,
we now get our part 2.

Obviously as soon as I heard about it I pre-ordered it, and now it is here.

So I’m off now, reading.

PS: the second copy is for my daughter, who also read Shades of Grey and was also waiting for the next installment.

PPS: I have read it and wanted to write about it, but spoiler-free — and that leaves things too vague. So I will simply say: I am satsified; it is a worthy sequel with high stakes and … now, that would also be a spoiler.

Read it.