Books: You Only Call When Your're In Trouble by Stephen McCauley (2023)

After a lifetime of taking care of his impossible but irresistible sister and his cherished niece, Tom is ready to put himself first. An architect specializing in tiny houses, he finally has an opportunity to build his masterpiece—“his last shot at leaving a footprint on the dying planet.” Assuming, that is, he can stick to his resolution to keep the demands of his needy family at bay. Naturally, that’s when his phone rings. His niece, Cecily—the real love of Tom’s life, as his boyfriend reminded him when moving out—is embroiled in a Title IX investigation at the college where she teaches that threatens her career and relationship. And after decades of lying, his sister wants him to help her tell Cecily the real identity of her father. Tom does what he’s always done—answers the call.

As I wrote five years ago when I read McCauley’s My Ex-Life, he has always excelled at creating wonderful relationships between gay men and straight women, along with the dysfunctional families that come with it. Part of the theme of this a book appears to be what we owe our family. Dorothy is complete mess, as is her daughter Cecily. Tom –who could probably benefit from therapy- is the one constant; he has helped them and solved most of their problems. While the book is not without it’s humor, there is a slight suffocation to the story and characters –maybe this goes on in the upper crust, upper middle class families where kids call their mother and uncle by name. So that created a certain heaviness I was not expecting, based on McCauley’s previous work.

Tom, surprisingly, comes off as unlikable at times and there are pacing issues, but I found the book worth reading (perhaps in paperback than hardcover). Also, Cecily’s relationship with her Chicago lover Sontash seems oddly unnecessary (or could've been heavily condensed). The whole premise of Sontash’s mother using Cecily’s Title IX issue that drove her from Deerpath (possibly Roosevelt University?) to the East coast is steeped in racist tropes and the old caste system where appearances must be paramount and scandal buried or tossed away.

Not as enjoyable as his previous work, but I still liked it.

Books: Forsooth By Jimmy Matejek-Morris (2023)

“Thirteen-year-old Calvin knows he's destined to be a star. . . if he can just stop making embarrassing mistakes onstage, like getting stuck on a single line―"Forsooth!"―during the school play. The summer after seventh grade, he's hoping for a fresh start. All he has to do is prove himself as an actor and fix the awkwardness with his friends that started after the play. But nothing's going according to plan. His parents don't get his love of performing. His best friend is moving on without him. And he might have a crush that could change everything. Surrounded by drama on all sides, Calvin will have to go off script if he's going to be a real friend and be true to himself.”

I’m torn by this middle aged title. I think the progression of Calvin and everyone else moves in a very realistic way. We all remember our first group of friends and as sometimes new people come in and others leave, you all wonder if the new people will like you. I also liked the idea that Calvin comes from a very religious family –something that is rarely seem in middle grade books with families who are religious but it is becoming increasingly rare for middle age books. Now I’m not religious in anyway, but having Calvin’s parents be who they are and not apologize for it adds more to the drama for this broadway loving kid (and it’s clear that both his parents are smarter than most –they already recognize that Calvin maybe different).

The dull parts were the angsty drama. Maybe when I was growing up and suddenly realizing you were not like other people, I could not easily put the word to it. In our current, modern age, having Calvin figuring out his identity or his relationship with his friends and family seems a bit farfetched. It’s the weird balance between drama and light-hearted tone that Matejek-Morris fails to bring together.

Books: Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde (2024)

 “Welcome to Chromatacia, where the societal hierarchy is strictly regulated by one's limited color perception. Civilization has been rebuilt after an unspoken “Something that Happened” five hundred years ago. Society is now color vision-segregated, professions, marriages, and leisure activities all dictated by an individual’s visual ability, and everything run by the shadowy National Color in far-off Emerald City. Out on the fringes of Red Sector West, twenty-year-old Eddie Russett is being bullied into an arranged marriage with the powerful DeMauve family, purples who hope to redden up their progeny’s color-viewing potential with Eddie’s gene stock. Their obnoxious daughter Violet is confident the marriage won’t hamper her style for too long because Eddie is about to go on trial for a murder he didn’t commit, and he’s pretty sure to be sent on a one-way trip to the Green Room for execution by soporific color exposure. Meanwhile, Eddie is engaged in an illegal relationship with his co-defendant, a Green, the charismatic, unpredictable, and occasionally deadly Jane Grey. Time is running out for Eddie and Jane to figure out how to save themselves. Negotiating the narrow boundaries of the Rules within their society, they search for a loophole—some truth of their world that has been hidden from its hyper-policed citizens.”

For the most part, Red Side Story is worth the 15 year gap between this book and Shades of Grey. And much like Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series (which will have an eighth and final novel, Dark Reading Matter, out in 2025), he brings forth similar ideas, but approaches the concept of a totalitarian future society from the same very different, yet skewed perspective. The good part of Red Side Story is we get some answers from the first book, but we still don’t get a clear understanding what the people of Collective are. They act and respond in a very human sort of way, but they also act like automatons much of the time, especially the Yellows who love rules – or highly functioning androids who believe they’re real. We get a better idea that the four sectors of the Chromatacia are some sort game board, I guess (?), or some sort of highly developed physiological computer/hologram program to test people’s reaction to a authoritarian the social order (The Book of Harmony and the tyrannical following of rules, and preventing free-thinking).

While those will be obviously answered in a third book, I was bothered by a few deus ex machine aspects that let them get away from certain death by the last minute intervention from other people. There were at least three very obvious parts, including the trip to Crimsololia and the timely arrival of Hanson (Angel-Creator?) who saves Eddie and Jane from Yellows who were assigned to murder them, drops a cache of Very Important Plot Points, then because he believes he’s killed them, leaves before Jane’s magic key saves them - so no harm no fowl. The second when the escape their doom from the crime of killing the Courtland from the first book, as well as the Yellows, by another timely arrival, and even their escape from Vermillion was too easy.

The Tin Men, along with the Apocryphal Man (named Baxter’s), are other helpful plot devices that make you realize that neither Eddie nor Jane are really solving any mystery of who and what they are –it’s being fed to them one spoonful at a time.

Still, Fforde’s deadpan and satirical humor shines through. His absurd worlds will remind many of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and Monty Python, which plays on the comedy of manners that British still think, is cool.

The set-up for book three is here, as well, but I found the ending a bit disappointing. I sense the plot is leaning towards a more formulaic ending rather than some Big Revelation. But we’ll have to wait see –just, I hope, not another fifteen years!

Books: Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde (2009)

 

“Hundreds of years in the future, the world is an alarmingly different place. Life is lived according to The Rulebook and social hierarchy is determined by your perception of color. Eddie Russett is an above-average Red who dreams of moving up the ladder. Until he is sent to the Outer Fringes where he meets Jane - a lowly Grey with an uncontrollable temper and a desire to see him killed. For Eddie, it is love at first sight. But his infatuation will lead him to discover that all is not as it seems in a world where everything that looks black and white is really shades of grey.”

First released in the UK in 2009 (published in the US in 2010 and I read it in 2011), Shades of Grey was supposed to be the beginning of a new dystopian trilogy situated in Chromatocia, a world ruled by the Colortocracy where color perception has faded and social hierarchy is determined by what colors you can see. 

Unfortunately, things did not go as planned. After writing for nearly decade plus with little time off, author Jasper Fforde schedule a tiny break to recharge his batteries. So after the seventh book in his Thursday Next was released in 2012, and with work already completed on his YA series The Last Dragonslayer: The Eye of Zoltar, which would be released in 2014, he began his leisure activity (mostly photography). But things grew quiet in his world. In his Acknowledgments for his 2018 novel Early Riser, he talks about what delayed this books release. He calls it his “creative hiatus of 2014-2016,” or in plainer language, writer’s block. And thus Early Riser, not a the second Shades of Grey novel, or a Thursday Next, or the fourth novel in The Last Dragonslayer series (which was only supposed to be three books) became his first adult novel to be released in 6 years. As he struggled out the pit, he was finally able to get back work but he’s playing catch up, now.

In my original review in 2011, I found the first half of the book slow going, which is a trademark of many fantasy writers. It does take Fforde a long time to set up his world, slowly revealing how the different colors people see influences their standing in society and the way the government functions as a whole –so at times it becomes a largely a plotless tome of world building, this first half. My opinion has not changed too much, but I did find myself more involved the second time around, which then made me wonder what exactly, is going on in this odd world.

The plot finally does kick in, and provides a satisfying setup for the two sequels. Sadly, no one, let alone Fforde, thought it would take 15 years to get book two. Nevertheless, one hopes that Red Side Story, coming in May of 2024, will go smoother with all the heavy lifting done in this book. We know the third book will not be out next year, as the eighth novel in the Thursday Next series (the last one was 2011) is due in 2025.

For us American’s not familiar with the Western half of the UK, details reveal that East Carmine is located in Wales (the A470 road is mentioned), and the description of the town close to the lower of a series of five dams suggests it is Rhayader, at the foot of the Elan Valley. Nearby Rusty Hill was once Builth Wells. The town of Vermillion used to be Hereford. The town of High Saffron is on the coast beyond the dams, which suggests Aberystwyth.

So, at its base elements, Shades of Grey is just a clever, very elaborate social and political satire –a sub-genre of comedy/humor that British have done so well for decades with. It’s also poking fun at the whole dystopian genre. It is whimsical, without being to over the top and its verbal wordplay will remind many of Douglas Adams and Monty Python.

I do believe Fforde should be more popular here in the States than he currently is, but I also understand that satire –be it political, social, or dystopian - is not everyone’s cup of tea. But he really is a very witty man with an ingenious, sharp and adroit talent for finding a joke in the oddest of places.