Shades of Grey

Lately I re-read a book called ‘Shades of Grey’ By Jasper Fforde. I read it again for the Waterstones book club, a brilliant read in itself, even on my second reading of it I could not put it down. One of the fundamental plot devices that are used within the book is the idea that everybody can only see one colour, Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, and purple, or if you are really unfortunate you can only see grey. There is a hierarchy within the book those who can see Purple for instance are what we would refer to as upper-class and those people that cannot see any colour but Grey are the lower-classes, and as such are treated like it.

It got me wondering if I could only see one colour alongside grey what would it be? My first thought was Green there is loads of green within nature and lots of different shades. But then I really got thinking about it and I think yellow would be the colour I would choose for the simple reason of I would miss it, a funny thing to say ‘ I would miss it’ But yellow too me is so happy and fresh that I think I would lament its loss more than any other colour.

I woke up in the night and because there was minimal light within my room everything was grey, I sat and looked around for a bit and it was so depressing!  It made me understand why in the book every one craved colour to see, their own colour they could naturally see or the artificial colour gardens that had been created. Life would be so boring and dismal without colour.  Imagine walking around in a world that is so colour less, no bright flowers, no blue of the sky. How boring.

There’s one guy in the book club called Bob, he’s from America and because I am so useless with names I always, in my mind refer to him as ‘the American’. Bob is a very clever man, and always manages to see hidden meanings within books that to be honest always seem to swoosh right by me.  He made and interesting one about this book, and once I had it explained to me I could understand where he was coming from.  It was about the social politics within the book and how when you really looked at them you could relate it to our own world. How the people that were born into the world, and could naturally see purple were automatically above anyone else, the same going with ‘the greys’ (as they are referred to in the book) they were born without the ability to see any other colour so were naturally the working class. Of course in the book if you married someone ‘up spectrum’ then you would socially advance. It’s the same in our world people who are born to privilege have it automatically, where the other people who are harder off have to continually work at it. He also said some other things that tied into nature getting its own back with man eating plants but I won’t go into that now, on the basis that I don’t think I would explain it as intelligently as he did.

I would recommend the book to any one, in fact any of the Fforde books they are a blast! : D