BOOK REVIEW: "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro

I had an ambitious reading list for the winter break between semesters, and this one wasn't initially on it. But, I kept hearing my friend Irene's voice in my head urging me to read "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro. In fact, she insisted that I read it before I saw the movie, which was my original intention.

I am now tremendously grateful for her advice.

That is not to say that the movie adaptation screwed the pooch -- it really didn't. In fact, the adaptation is one of the most faithful I've seen, with only very minor plot changes and worthy cuts to the length of certain sections of the story.

But, the voice of the narrator in the book is so much more powerful than in the movie. In the book, we are looking at the story solely from Kathy's perspective, a fact of which she reminds the reader frequently. And Kathy is a flawed character, not immune to bias and certainly not omniscient. The movie retains that lack of omniscience, but you get far more of a sense of being an observer outside the story than you do as if you were seeing the events from Kathy's eyes and ears. Changing from first- to third-person perspective is always a little jarring, though not necessarily detrimental to the story overall.

That being said, both the book and the movie affected me profoundly (as you may have guessed since I have now been spurred to write about it). It's been a long time since a fiction novel so moved me -- I think the last 15 pages of Ian McEwan's "Atonement" were the last to reward my rapt attention with such a gut punch.

If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, 1) shame on you, and 2) there be some potential spoilers ahead, but I've done my best to keep my observations vague.

This is an incredible novel for book clubs because it is rich with themes to explore. The first very obvious theme has to to with medical and technological ethics. Certainly, this novel provides a fertile field for countless lofty discussions in this arena, but they would all be conducted in the abstract. In fact, I would love to get into a comparison of what it means to be human between this novel and Cormac McCarthy's "The Road."

That's all well and great and tends to make people feel like cigar-smoking intellectuals, but this novel is also deeply personal and deserves some attention to the themes closer to the heart and hearth.

The one theme I keep coming across in discussion circles is that of nature vs. nurture. The children in the book are brought up in a very fatalist environment; their lives are set and there is no need, indeed no encouragement of deep philosophical reflection. Human history, though, is rife with radical individuals who buck the status quo and start asking those questions. Tommy is clearly the closest character to meet this description, but yet he succumbs quietly. And, it's entirely possible that Kathy was simply going along with Tommy's quest knowing full-well the outcome having already resigned herself to it.

Another point I considered is the cycle of a life. When your life is so short, what are the stages of growth and maturity? People today generally have 70-80 years to consider their own mortality, and most would put it off until those last few. The characters in the book get to this acceptance very early in their lives, or perhaps they just never question it (going back to a nature vs. nurture discussion), and it's so painfully tragic to experience through Kathy's observations and Tommy's reactions because their nature -- or their learned submission, depending on how you view it -- is so out of sync with our own.

That's all I really want to say about it because I really don't want to ruin anything for anyone who wants to read the book or see the movie. But I do have to close this note with my favourite passage. The words are Tommy's, as recalled by Kathy. The imagery is beautiful and succinct, and it breaks my heart.

"I keep thinking about this river somewhere, whit the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the ends it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart. That's how I think it is with us. It's a shame, Kath, because we've loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can't stay together forever."

Who needs a tissue?