*It may seem unnecessary to include a spoiler disclaimer for a book that’s almost 14 years old, but you ought to know this book is too phenomenal to do a first read-through with anything other than near-complete ignorance of what you’re in for. If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron, I suggest you close this tab immediately and track down a copy at the nearest library, or peruse the audiobook as narrated by John Lee, whose voice perfectly captures the ineffable Britishness of the thing. 

Shades of Grey—not the indecorous novel that almost always seems to be top of mind when I mention it, but rather Jasper Fforde’s incomparable dystopian fiction, Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron—is among my favourite books, and has been for at least a decade. I’ve read it more than a few times. This week, I began listening to it for the first time in a voice other than the one inside my head—John Lee’s—and was enraptured all over again. If I had to describe it in a single word, I’d probably choose quirky, but it is, of course, so much more. 

Fforde’s far-future setting is both grim dystopia and absurdist hilarity—like The Giver meets Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but not really very like either. Protagonist Eddie Russet’s world is anathema in its stifling, intractable hierarchy and voluminous, severe Rulebook, but simultaneously delightful in its eccentric wit and indefinable Britishness. The world is being systematically dismantled by the powers that be, but no one would think of abolishing afternoon tea. 

Particularly striking to me is the society’s relentless pursuit of the primal. A series of Rule-mandated “Leapbacks” have successively stripped away many modern conveyances (while the Rules prohibit railways, an ingenious loophole permits a singular railway), inventions, discoveries, and knowledge—science and history having been eliminated—before the protagonist arrives on the scene. The resultant world is a hugely diminished one, illuminated soberingly by the library’s barren shelves and comically by obsessive consternation over the spoon shortage. 

“All children are to attend school until the age of 16, or until they have learned everything—whichever be the sooner,” reads Rule 2.1.01.05.002. In eliminating so much knowledge, the Collective has made school very nearly superfluous: “because Munsell [the ostensible Rulebook author] had attempted to make the world knowable for everyone by simply reducing the number of facts, there wasn’t that much to teach.” 

Inventiveness is so thoroughly discouraged that anyone exhibiting it is flagged and sent to a fringe village on (ironically) invented or exaggerated charges as a precaution—lest creativity spread. Unbeknownst to Eddie, his attempts to refine queueing (could it be more British?) are the real reason he finds himself in the edge-of-the-map (not that maps are permitted) East Carmine. Incuriousness is, appallingly, a virtue in this dystopia. 

One illuminating conversation runs thus: 

‘I want a club where anyone can ask questions.’ He stared at me suspiciously. 

 

‘What sort of questions?’

 

‘Unanswered questions.’

 

‘Edward, Edward,’ he said with a patronizing smile, ‘there are no unanswered questions of any relevance. Every question that we need to ask has been answered fully. If you can’t find the correct answer, then you are obviously asking the wrong question.’… 

 

‘Open discussion leads to the mistaken belief that curiosity is somehow desirable. Munsell tells us over and over again that inquisitiveness is simply the first step on a rocky road that leads to disharmony and ruin. Besides,’ he added, ‘asking a poor question gives it undeserved relevance, and attempting to answer a bad question is a waste of spirit. The question you should be asking yourself is, “how can I discharge my civil obligation most efficiently to improve the smooth running of The Collective?” And the answer to that is: not wasting a prefect’s valuable time with spurious suggestions for associations.’

It is strangely refreshing for me, as a science communication scholar, to read a dystopian novel in which the elimination of knowledge pursuit—and the protagonist’s dawning comprehension that this is a tangible loss—features prominently. Despite it being a favourite of mine, I’ve hesitated to recommend Shades of Grey too wholeheartedly, because it suffers the affliction that also plagues Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles—namely, over a decade has passed without a sequel in sight. Happily, Shades of Grey 2 is set to be released in the UK next year.

Natasha (Strydhorst) Unsworth

Natasha (Strydhorst) Unsworth (‘16) is a science communication researcher and practitioner working on her Ph.D. at Texas Tech University. Natasha hails from Calgary, Alberta. Some of her favo(u)rite authors are C. S. Lewis, Francis Collins, and Bill Bryson. Her favourite earthly place is the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and her favourite activities are reading and enjoying the great outdoors—preferably simultaneously.