Taking Early
Riser into the summer reading stack will be surprisingly refreshing. Even
though it arrives with both love, and a shiver of foreboding.
Dystopian fiction has become
a necessary aspect to our politically unsettled and climate-challenged lives,
and there’s a new longing for Joseph Campbell’s heroic figures to show us how
to survive with honor and preserve a thriving planet.
As Jaspar Fforde leaps into
the genre, an adult level of frustration and chaos appears: Early Riser, unlike Fforde’s long series
of literary spoofs, lifts its curtain on despair and death, moderated by the
equivalent of Big Pharma. Charlie Worthing, a novice “winter consul” allowed to
stay awake for the frigid months of the new form of winter—while most people
lie in a drug-induced sleep to save energy—seeks the source of viral dreams
that are infecting sleepers and the awake. For Charlie, the dreams overlap the
strange things going on around him: manipulations by two sides of the culture
clash, and provoked disappearances of those who might be able to object.
What makes Early Riser unforgettable, though, is
not the particular form of dystopia Fforde displays, but the affection and
loyalty that Charlie and some of his new acquaintances turn into effective
action against pharmaceutical giant HiberTech. Even as Charlie tackles his
first assignment, taking a “soul-dead” individual named Mrs Tiffen to be parted
out and recycled, the small details of humanity catch at him like
“stick-tights” caught walking across a field of seeding plants: “Mrs Tiffen
could play the bouzouki,” he notes at the opening of the book. “Not well, and
only one tune: ‘Help Yourself’ by Tom Jones.
… She and I had not exchanged an intelligent word since we met five
hours before, and the reason was readily explained: Mrs Tiffen was dead, and
had been for several years.”
As Charlie confronts his
first wakeful winter—where a mild day is around minus forty degrees—he also
notes how hard he finds it to believe that a person who can play the bouzouki
is no longer a person. Alive. Loving.
Affection becomes Charlie’s
own melted area. His Morphenox-twisted dreams and the viral psychopathy
infusing the people he meets mingle with an artifical affair he’s been dragged
into—the highly attractive (but crazy?) Birgitta needs him to pretend to adore
her. “‘The best relationships always begin like a bad rom-com in my experience.
I’ll find a tartan travel rug and a picnic set for the Sno-Trac,’ she added,
now quite enthused by the whole idea.”
Fforde sweeps the action
forward briskly, unafraid of mythologizing as he goes along, complete with
Villains with a capital V. He conflates Winter with the possibility of global
evil, so that Charlie admits, “The citizenry didn’t know or care what the
Consuls did during the cold to keep them safe, they just wanted to wake alive
in the Spring, same as always. For many people, the Winter didn’t really exist
except in an abstract sort of way, and by consequence, neither did we.”
The book couldn’t be further
from a “beach book” in its details, yet the cover catches a bit of the viral
dreaming from the story and offers a beach scene (sprinkled with snow). It’s a
good hint for this season: Taking Early
Riser into the summer reading stack will be surprisingly refreshing. Even
though it arrives with both love, and a shiver of foreboding.
PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.
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PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.
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