Operation deep zzzz
A novel about a world hibernating to survive harsh winters feels like a sleeper hit.
Fans of prolific Brit novelist Jasper Fforde will appreciate the irony of his ending a three-year “creative hiatus” with a novel about human hibernation. If art has imitated life, it must have been a rough ride. In the alternate reality of Early Riser, 99% of humanity sleeps through five-month “Winters” that amply deserve the capital letter, complete with blizzards, marrowfreezing temperatures, roving bandits and other worse, unspeakable threats.
Best turn in then; but somebody’s got to keep an eye on things, and a corps of Consuls are tasked with upholding the law and keeping the cogs of civilisation turning through the months of slumber. The latest recruit to the force is nonchalant everyman Charlie Worthing, hoping to trade a dead-end job in a breeding centre/orphanage for a variety of attractive benefits – and a very slim chance of living until spring.
It’s a gloriously unsentimental world, packed with gallows humour and comically gruesome threats for Charlie to contend with.
Life as a Winter Consul is just as cheap as advertised. Nobody’s quite who they seem to be, and there might even be a conspiracy afoot between the Consuls, a secretive “real sleep” underground and the suppliers of a life-saving hibernation drug that’s become a class marker and form of social control.
Fforde is a practised hand at the alternate-reality game, and Early Riser is
It’s a gloriously unsentimental world, packed with gallows humour and comically gruesome threats.
blessedly free from conscious “worldbuilding”. It’s all story all the way through: continuous, propulsive narrative momentum that never lets up. Outlandish gags and love letters to English and Welsh pop culture and comfort food are thrown out at a merry pace along the way. Fforde is an equal-opportunity humorist who can sneak in a subtle chuckle with style, but doesn’t disdain an easy laugh that nevertheless hits the spot.
The real surprise is the genuine emotional weight that comes with all this. Death happens frequently and colourfully in Early
Riser, but bereavement isn’t brushed under the carpet. There’s a very familiar and believable anguish over the fate of people who survive but don’t fully reawaken from hibernation (a condition central to the plot from early on).
Readers might also detect parallels to our economic system, in which a certain amount of human wastage is considered acceptable in the name of stability.
This will be an easy pick for Fforde aficionados, but anyone seeking an entertaining and inventive comic novel should easily get their money’s worth here.
Even if you’re not sold on the really madcap elements, they’re just the tip of the iceberg – and for that matter, readers in New Zealand can gain the added pleasure of enjoying Early Riser in the last weeks of winter.
Nestle in and enjoy. Spring can wait a little longer.
EARLY RISER, Jasper Fforde (Hodder & Stoughton, $44.99)