Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

I was not prepared.  When I decided to read Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, I did so as a way to give the author a second try.  I have tried to read The Remains of the Day back in college, and I found the tight, closely-controlled writing difficult, and not in a good way.  When I saw the movie they made from the book, I realized why it was written the way that it was.  But I couldn't get through it.  When I started to see Never Let Me Go all over the blogosphere, I had to work myself up for another try.  I try not to read too many reviews of the books I'm going to read before I read them-I don't want someone else's opinion to blur my own-so I really didn't know much about the book except that I had tried to read this author before and failed.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that this book is about as far away from the content of The Remains of the Day as it is possible to get and still be the same form of media.  Never Let Me Go is the story of Kath, Tommy, and Ruth, three students at a boarding school in England, which you very quickly realize is not your typical boarding school.  The students are clones, created specifically to become organ donors.  Their teachers try to shield them as best they can from the inevitability of their fate, but each in their turn goes off to be a carer-someone who helps donors recover-until it is their turn to be cut up for parts. 

Given the subject matter, you might assume that this book is a treatise on medical ethics or social justice, but Ishiguro uses this rather interesting setting to tell a coming-of-age story.  The story is told with Kath as narrator, and it opens with her getting ready to retire from being a carer.  The story is told as memory, in Hansel and Gretl fashion-Ishiguor leaves a trail of crumbs, hints of what is really going on behind the placid boarding school setting, tidbits that make it impossible to stop reading until you figure out what is going on.  Everything is just slightly askew in this book-it's like the real world slipped sideways just a bit.

Ishiguro begins with Kath explaining her retirement from being a carer, though at the time you have no idea what that actually means.  What this narrative structure does is allow the reader to spend the bulk of the novel  pondering the relationships the characters have to each other, rather than waiting for them to escape from their predicament.  While the fact of their creation and eventual destruction is always below the surface, there are many things in Ruth, Kath, and Tommy that are familiar.  First love, jealousy, betrayal, insecurity-all pretty universal elements of a classic coming-of-age story.  By the time Ishiguro finally gets around to giving you enough information about the donation program to figure out what's been going on, it's practically the end of the book.  Only then do you realize that what you have been reading is not just your ordinary teenage love story, but a story about what it means to be human.  If clones can love and hurt and feel anger and fear, then what separates them from the "natural" people who created them?

Top Ten Tuesday: Children's Books I DID Read

Thanks to the women at The Broke and the Bookish for hosting Top Ten Tuesdays.  Being a list-lover as I am, I am always excited for a new topic.

Excited, that is, until this week.  This week's topic is "books I wish I had read as a child", and the happy fact is that I can't think of one.  I've read most of the children's classics, and plenty more besides.  I even tried looking at other people's list to see if maybe I was just blocking out titles that I felt ashamed to say I'd never read, but nope...I'm actually thrilled as can be with my childhood reading selections.

But I love lists!  What's a list-loving book blogger to do? Why, chan...er....modify the topic slightly, of course.  So here, rather than book I wish I had read as a kid, I will revisit a past topic I did not get to participate in-my favorite childhood books.  There were so many I'm going to have a hard time narrowing it down to just ten. 

Bridge to Terebithia, Katherine Paterson-I love this story of Jess and Leslie and their unlikely friendship.  This is also the first time I understood that children can die.  I can't read this aloud to my classes today because I sill cry every time.

Are You There, God?  It's Me, Margaret, Judy Blume-I'm pretty sure that there are women about my age all over the country who would choose this coming of age story as one of their favorites.  I was so disappointed to read Blume's adult works later in life.  They just didn't hold a candle to her young adult books.

Island of the Blue Dolphins, Scott O'Dell-This was my introduction to strong female characters.  I so admires Karana and her ability to keep herself alive, and never to lose hope.  Plus, I've sort of always wanted to live on an island, though preferably not alone in a hut.

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, Judith Kerr-This may have been the first book I read about the Holocaust, and it started a life-long interest in the subject.  The thought that your whole life could be stolen away from you in the blink of an eye was frightening, and as I got older I appreciated how Kerr used Anna's story to introduce young readers to the idea of oppression.

Jacob, Have I Loved, Katherine Paterson-I so identified with Louise in this book.  As a quiet kid who was pretty shy, I often felt misunderstood by my peers and I understood her jealousy of the ease with which her sister lived in the world.. Louise was another strong female character that I adored.

The Narnia series, C.S. Lewis-My first fantasy series, but certainly not my last.  I had the rare and intense pleasure of watching the first book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe turned into the story into a movie that was EXACTLY like I had imagined reading it all those years ago.

Across Five Aprils, Irene Hunt-I've always been a fan of historical fiction, and this is probably one of the first ones I read.  It was unusual for me to find strong connections with male characters when I was a girl, but I did with this one.

The Secret Garden, Francis Hodgson Burnett-Oh, how I cried when Colin stood up and walked to his father for the first time.  And as hateful as Mary can be, you can't help but feel sorry for the poor orphan living in that cold, looming house.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betsy Smith-Francie was one of my favorite characters growing up, and I still reread this one every few years.  Historical fiction meets coming of age story-two of my favorite things all rolled into one.

Rutabaga Stories, Carl Sandburg-I checked this book out of the school library so many times the librarian offered to get me my own copy.  A collection of humorous short stories, Sandberg's gift for language and down-home sort of humor was a hit with me.

 

The Cay, Theodore Taylor-When my teacher read this aloud to us in fifth grade, I was captivated.  Living in an all white suburb of Chicago in the 70s, I had never really had any exposure to issues of race or racism.  This book opened my eyes to the absurdity of separating ourselves from each other on the basis of the melanin content of our skin.

A Summer to Die, Lois Lowry-Like many a pre-teen, I was a bit of a tragedy junkie.  This book by Lois Lowry fit the bill.  The story of a young girl whose sister gets cancer and dies is still a tearjerker.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry,  Mildred Taylor-Taylor's writing is a masterpiece of historical fiction and character development.  While The Cay may have been my first exposure to racism, Taylor's works certainly helped me put what I learned into a historical perspective.

A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore

A Gate at the Stairs is the story of Tassie Keltjin,the daughter of a potato farmer in rural Wisconsin.  In the days before 9-11, she is a college student At the University of Wisconsin in Troy, Wisconsin.  Like most college students she is cash poor, and so she begins looking for a job to keep herself in clothes and food and heat.  She applies to be the nanny for Sarah and Edward Thornwood-Brink, a couple in the process of adopting a biracial baby.  From very early on Tassie can sense that something is not quite right with Sarah and Edward.  Their manner is just-off from normal, their interactions are intimate and cold at the same time.  Tassie never imagines, however, the secret that will come to affect her life and the life of the little girl, Mary-Emma.  This novel is a strange, uncomfortable coming of age story, one that left me feeling unsettled, and unsure I really got what Moore was trying to convey.

Moore's writing is rich.  Her language shows a depth of thought and a flair for metaphor greater than any other author I've read recently.  There are long passages where Tassie is thinking about her life and events in the story that would be worthy of a circus contortionist in the way they bend and twist, making seemingly random connections into something meaningful.  This was really interesting for the first three quarters of the novel, but over time I found myself wishing for a more straight-forward narrative.  But then, about three quarters of the way through the novel is where I started to feel like the story I thought I was reading was not actually the story Moore was telling.

While most of the story revolves around Tassie's relationship with Sarah and Mary-Emma, there are other, seemingly disparate, stories woven throughout.  Tassie has a secret relationship with a fellow student who turns out to belong to a fanatical Islamist organization.  When he disappears from her life suddenly, I expected there to be some fall-out for her, but he just fades from the story.  When she loses Mary-Emma, I expected there to be some resolution to that storyline, but we never hear what becomes of the little girl.  The loss of her brother is the only one in which we get a sense of how that loss affected not just Tassie but her parents as well-and that is the last quarter of the book.  The theme of loss is the only constant throughout the story, but it is only with that last loss that we see exactly how deeply Tassie feels her sorrow.

One thing that struck me about this book is all of the white liberal-guilt and angst portrayed by Moore through the interracial adoption group that Sarah and Edward become involved in.  The conversations that Tassie overhears while playing upstairs with the children during their meetings are circular, in turns angry and defensive, and probably very authentic, despite seeming stereotypical.  The themes never change, and most of the white parents seem to feel that their adoption of the black and biracial children is under-appreciated by people who question their ability to raise children of color.  Complaints about people's comments on the street, or the advice they get from well-meaning people that end up sounding like back-handed compliments, are all fodder for their insecurity and self-pity.  They bring up issues of race and class, even within liberal communities, that people believe have long been subdued by inclusiveness and acceptance.  Moore seems to be pointing out the naivete of people who believe we have entered a post-racial era, where issues of race have mostly been addressed.