Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde
Jasper Fforde surely must be one of the cleverest, funniest and most inventive authors currently writing. If Jonathan Swift, the foremost prose satirist of the 17th-18th century, were alive today to read Red Side Story or other novels by the author, he would likely doff his hat in admiration or rollick with uproarious laughter at the whimsy, wit and wordplay. One could easily get lost on his website which he describes as “one huge ‘Fforgasbord’ of stuff” just as one does in reading this marvelous, fanciful latest creation. He describes himself as follows: “Jasper Fforde is my real name. I am a British writer who lives in Wales and writes absurdist fiction.”
Genre-bending, literary fantasy pleases vast numbers of readers who claim to eschew the more traditional fantasy genre. Let us be grateful this author gave up his 19-year career in the film industry to write these attention-grabbing novels! Oh no, I’ve lost my head and am gushing but I have been a devoted fan since I picked up The Eyre Affair, not long after it was published in 2001; the first in the seven-volume Thursday Next series.
Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Society
Red Side Story is intended as the second in a trilogy, but truly can be enjoyed as a stand-alone novel without having read the first book in the series, Shades of Gray. Published fourteen years earlier, in January 2010, it introduces the main characters. The settings are a post-apocalyptic dystopian society restructured and rebuilt after a historical event that occurred some five hundred years ago, referred to as “the Something that Happened”, far enough in the past as to no longer be remembered or cared about. Any curiosity about the past is not only discouraged and indeed, its expression may precipitate an early demise to the inquirer.
Their authoritarian, strictly regulated world is Chromatacia with a rigid, visual color-based, segregated caste system. It is determined by the predominant color people can see for individuals can perceive no more than two colors. The highest social strata is made up of “the purples” who see red and blue followed by the next level whose hues are blue, then red, next yellow followed by green and the greys at the bottom. They only see monochromatic shades with less than 10% color vision and are considered beyond the pale; virtual outcasts relegated to the most menial jobs. Their primary advantage over the upper classes is that they are subject to less supervision with more flexible rules for comportment.
High Prefects enforce the myriad, confusing and somewhat arbitrary rules and regulations but they, in turn, are subjects of a distant governing body called National Color located in Emerald City. Local to this story, in East Carmine, the High Prefect is the patriarch of the powerful deMauve family.
Mature adolescents approaching adulthood universally undergo extensive testing termed Ishihara to gauge their visual ability which will predetermine their future including career and marriage eligibility. Marriages are arranged, not for love, but to improve the visual color saturation of future offspring. It is unnecessary for couples to like each other as long as they are color-compatible and have good procreation potential. Ishihara results are unquestionable and final.
Divided, Surveilled Society
Everyone is imprinted with a barcode on their thumbs and policed by individuals within the towns as well as from overhead “Swans” which serve not only as ‘observation’ drones but are also capable of wiping out a person or even an entire village in a burst of flames. George Orwell’s richly imagined “Big Brother” is not merely watching you, he may well be sent to kill you!
Merits and demerits are awarded based on strict adherence to rules (and popularity). Repeat offenders, independent thinkers and rebels may be subjected to death by “The Mildew”, a fatal illness resulting from the secret administration of a fast-acting deadly poison not unlike Zyklon B used by the Nazis in Concentration Camps.
The more benign yet still deadly one-way trip to the Green Room is the prevalent fatal punishment. This provides a gentler execution utilizing saturated Technicolor projections of pleasant scenes accompanied by music. It bears a striking similarity to the euthanasia center depicted in the classic 1973 film Soylent Green.
Chock-Full of Allusions
Jasper Fforde has richly studded Red Side Story with multiple allusions referencing literary and cinematic history sources to amuse his readers. The title alludes to the blood rivalry of Reds and Greens suggesting a primary source in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, ironically performed in this novel by a traveling theatre troupe. The audience accepts it as a morality play with the two protagonists deserving death.
The Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents brilliant collaboration on the 20th-century musical version, West Side Story, is the updated tragedy which more closely parallels the current plot. The opposing New York City gangs, the Puerto Rican immigrant Sharks versus the blue-collar white Jets clash as do members of the various color strata. Tony and Maria are models for narrator/protagonist star-crossed lovers Edward Russett and his darling, brilliant but unpredictable Jane Grey. According to Color Wheel theory, Reds and Greens are complementary. That is, they are pairs of colors when combined cancel each other out producing a grayscale color.
In Chromatacia, “fraternizing between complementary colors was not just demeritable but severely taboo.” Edward Russet’s recent Ishihara conclusively determined he is not only a Red but at 86.7%, one of the most desirable specimens of young manhood. Jane Grey tested light green; a combination of yellow and blue components. As a result her status was upgraded slightly and her surname was changed to Brunswick. With such diametrically opposed complementary colors, the couple cannot marry and really should not speak nor be friends as they are classified as mortal enemies.
Eddie’s father is insistent his son marry Violet deMauve who is sufficiently Purple to become a future Head Prefect despite their abhorrence of one another and ties to others. Troubles pile up for Edward and Jane as he is about to be tried for a murder of a highborn Yellow which he did not commit. The conviction is all but certain and the sentence death. Join the couple and a large cast of vastly entertaining characters as they embark on hazardous and picaresque adventures while attempting to prove Edward’s innocence and continue their illegal relationship.
The prose sparkles and the colors vibrate off the page in this masterful satirical fantasy. Jasper Fforde is a creative genius and Red Side Story is wildly entertaining. Emily St. John Mandel, Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams fans would really enjoy this rollicking work of fiction. One can only hope he does not wait another fourteen years to complete the trilogy!
About Jasper Fforde:
Jasper Fforde spent 20 years in the film business before debuting on the New York Times bestseller list with The Eyre Affair in 2001. Since then he has written another fifteen novels, including The Big Over Easy, The Constant Rabbit, and Shades of Grey. Fforde lives and works in his adopted nation of Wales. Visit Jasper’s website, find him on Facebook, and follow him on Twitter.
