Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go



I'm on record as being a fan of Kazuo Ishiguro's work. I had the opportunity to hear Ishiguro speak about and read from "Never Let Me Go" in the spring at the Seminary Coop, and finally got a chance to read (and listen to parts of) "Never Let Me Go" over the holidays.

When Ishiguro spoke about where the idea for Never Let Me Go came from, he talked about wanting to capture the sense that a child gets when s/he leaves the protected constructed world of her/his parents and comes to in contact with the "real" world and has to deal with the fact that that world has its own conceptions of her/him*.

Among the passages he read was one where "Madame" was ambushed by the girls at Hailsham and how she recoiled at their presence, which illustrated that moment of realization that the world sees you very differently than you (and/or your people) see yourself. Like most of Ishiguro's work it is exquisitely written, the narrative is well-told and well-paced. In "Never Let Me Go" (like in "Remains of the Day") we are presented with a nostalgic narrator with a keen recollection for detail.

(Immediately after I finished "Never Let Me Go" I began reading "Shalimar the Clown" by Salman Rushdie and was almost overwhelmed by the difference in pace between the two. They are two of my favorite writers but possess such different styles.)

The book has gotten some press because it is set in an alt-future UK where cloning for organ harvesting is an accepted practice. Most of the characters are in fact clones, and the first half of the story takes place at a boarding school (go on, think "harry potter", that's what's become of the british boarding school). There is an ethical debate at work that is almost entirely below the surface in the book. Despite the topic area, the book didn't have that over-the-topness that seems to define the genre of science fiction. With a regrettable exception, the book doesn't pat itself on it's back because it does address an important topic. It might be hyperbole to say that the "cloneness" could be replaced by any other problematic definitional quality (say being from an unpopular religio/ethic/racial group, or having a tendency to jump unnecessarily at odd moments) but I don't think it would be an indefensible assertion.

That aside, you get a well-told story about a woman connecting with her childhood friends at the end of their lives and reconnecting to the stories that defined her youth.



*this is something that every child deals with, but might be more extreme in some cases (like say the immigrant child whose two worlds are themselves seemingly disjoint)

Note: I checked out the audiobook from the popular library at the Harold Washington Branch. It was an 8CD set, I listened to discs 1,2, and 5 and read the remainder of the book.
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My Kazuo Ishiguro "credentials": I had the opportunity to hear him speak (and read from Never Let Me Go) in April of 2005 at the University of Chicago. I consider his "Remains of the Day" to be a perfectly written book. Since 1999 I have read "Remains of the Day" (twice), "When We were orphans", "An Artist of the Floating World", "The Unconsoled" and "Never Let Me Go".

Posted: Tue - January 17, 2006 at 09:42 PM      

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