Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
The North Austin Reading Group met on December 5th at the North Village Branch of the Austin Public Library to discuss Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey. Eight people attended; all had read Fforde before. All started the book and 6 finished it. The book was published by Viking Adult, December 2009. It is available in hardback, paperback, audio book and on the Kindle. One innovation, “The Shades of Grey Cheat Sheet,” can be found at http://www.jasperfforde.com/grey/images/cheat.pdf. It’s a two-page list of some of the high points of a difficult-to-describe book.
This element—being hard to describe—made the book ideal for a discussion group. The setting is of a dystopian post-apocalyptic society (the Something that Happened) with a pecking order determined by one’s sensitivity to and perception of color. The “New Order” had undertaken “The Great Leap