What I said a few days ago:
I went with Never Let Me Go because I've had it recommended to me by a bunch of people over the years, because Ishiguro is supposedly one of the best writers around at the moment and it fills a hole in my reading, because of all his books this one has a bit of a sci-fi bent to it which is attractive to me, and because the movie's coming out soon and I want to read the book first. (side note --- sheesh, what the hell kind of a sentence is that? I must have been tired. Still, that's no excuse. Sorry.)
What I say now:
Sigh. I can't go into too much detail about the plot, for fear of giving things away. A group of kids grow up together in a large country house that's converted into a kind of school. We follow three friends - Kathy (the narrator), Ruth and Tommy - during their school lives and then afterwards, as they learn the fate that awaits them. And if that sounds a bit portentous, that's because it is, baby. Weirdly, Michael Bay's fucking terrible (even by his standards) movie The Island has more than a bit in common with Ishiguro's novel. No prizes for guessing which is better.
The real triumph of Never Let Me Go is Kathy's narration of her own story. Her language is simple and direct, and Ishiguro manages to find beauty in her words, without ever making her seem too over-the-top literary in her style (not easy in first-person writing). The other wonderfully realistic thing he does is have Kathy track backwards and forwards in time in a totally haphazard manner, often relating an anecdote only to say "Oh, well, that'll only make sense to you if I tell you about this other thing that happened two years earlier." She doesn't tell her story in order, instead letting one event lead her to the next. As the story goes on, the way Kathy (and her friends) connect things in their minds becomes very important. Some of the connections the characters make between events turn out to be totally incorrect, but their (sometimes quite naive) assumptions tell you an enormous amount about them.
The story is built on Kathy's patchwork of reminiscences, but the further it goes, the more you realise that there are large holes, things she's skipping over or talking around. For a while this was actually kind of frustrating but, if you stick it out to the end, everything is revealed, and the reason for Kathy's obfuscations becomes clear. Because of the way it's structured, I only fell in love with this book in the last thirty or forty pages, but they were so emotionally satisfying that they made the previous frustrations worth it. I'd say Ishiguro intended those frustrations, so that the resolution would feel so complete.
Anyway, as I say, it's a book where to tell much more about it would be to ruin it completely. All I'll tell you is: it's great. Go read it.
Cheers, JC
about to read: The Corner by David Simon and Ed Burns
books to go: 120
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ReplyDeleteIt left me a little cold, but perhaps that's just the effect of Ishiguro's style.
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