It’s no secret that I’m a massive fan of Fforde’s The Eyre Affair and its sequels, but for some reason I had never ventured into any of his other novels. Fforde did a live chat with the Guardian recently, which reminded me of this fact, and prompted me to give this series, “Nursery Crimes”, a go.
On page one of this novel, Oreo’s paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather, on receiving the news that their offspring would be marrying a black woman and a Jewish man (respectively), are gripped by racist outrage so powerful that it paralyses one of them and kills the other outright. On page three, the author sets out a scale, numbered one to ten, according to which black skin tone can be categorised; she describes her characters using this scale as they are introduced. To call this novel transgressive would be an understatement.