'Never Let Me Go' by Kazuo Ishaguro

[ventanamist]

I have just read this book and I am really, really annoyed.

To start with I got as much pleasure from reading this as I did his other books: 'The Remains of the Day' found it's way into my hands at a bored moment, so I started reading. It was wonderful - a new reading experience. Nothing much happened yet I was enthralled. His stories tend to be about fairly ordinary people on the periphery of great events. The writing style is simple, intimate and in the first person. But there is a vast sub text that carries on revealing itself long after you finish the story.

Why am I annoyed then? It's because in Never Let Me Go he encroaches on SFF territory, and he does it so sloppily that it took my breath away.

Why do some of these great mainstream authors think they can do a bit of SFF without reference to or respect for the great body of work that already exists? I suppose they think it's just another populist genre deserving of a certain contempt.

I am doubly annoyed because it was such a lovely poignant, intriguing story that had hold of me right up to the annoying bit.

Am I being unfair?

Are there any other mainstream authors who have done this? (I seem to remember the same annoyance with Herman Hesse's 'The Glass Bead Game'.)

 

[Omphalos]

Funny. That's one of the reasons I liked The Glass Bead Game.

 

[mosaix]

I thought it was an excellent SF book, very precise rather than sloppy.

A testament to the excellent writing was that, despite nothing much happens, it was a compelling story.

I thought it was in the tradition of John Wyndham - use SF to put people in an unusual environment and see how they react, see how society their works.

But the real truth behind the story, and the one that I thought the author was really trying to express, is that if you start young enough you can educate people into believing and accepting anything.

 

[ventanamist]

Well, it was a long time ago that I tried to read The Glass Bead Game. Maybe I've matured since then. Perhaps I should give it another go. I had read most of H.H's books by then and had great hopes for this one. I just remember that the story was set well into the future but there was no indication of any changes in technology. It really upset me at the time. Maybe there was and I didn't find it - I didn't read much of the book because of that impression.

Yes mosaix I understood the issues that K.I was exploring, but I just couldn't work out how such a society could come to be. It just didn't fit in with how I see humanity. I have not illusions about our acceptance of the most disgusting things as normal and our ability to delude and self-delude. But we're not that good at it. It is always untidy and flawed and there are always rebels and the most indoctrinated of people, given the right circumstances, can completely change (usually to a different form of indoctrination, I admit).

If only he had given me just a few indicators as to how it could possibly be. Yes, there were some but they didn't convince me.

Don't get me wrong. I love the sort of book where the SFF part is minimal, underplayed, understated, just part of the furniture. Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow for instance

 

[ventanamist]

Okay. What did I say about the sub-text revealing itself long after the story was finished. Well I guess it's still revealing itself. I suppose my annoyance was just part of the process. Yes, it really makes you think and keep thinking, whereas, too much explanation would have tidied it up so I could just file it away as merely one more story I've read.

 

[J-WO]

It also has the same title as that Bowie album where he went crap.