Never Let Me Go - Kazou Ishiguro
This novel irritated me to no end. It is a science fiction novel, supposedly. I picked it up because I felt like reading a science fiction novel and I do not recall ever reading anything written by a man with a Japanese name. I was looking forward to something with robots or some strange futuristic thing going on.
The novel is in England. There is this elite boarding school as the setting for where the narrator, Kathy, and her best friends for life, Ruth and Tommy, meet. They spend their entire childhood here. They are supposed to meet later in life to work through something that occurs while at this school.
I kept waiting for the book to get interesting. I knew it involved a secret government project in the 1990s where clones were created in order to provide donor organs for real human beings. There was a side project by a pro-clone advocacy group to show the world that the clones were more human than they thought and had souls. That was what this story was about...or not.
It never really got into the program the kids were involved in. It never really distinguished between real people and the clones other than sometimes people were repulsed by the clone kids. It never really mattered at all that they were clones. It never really made any difference that they were "farmed" to make donations.
What did matter? What was this book about? The entire book was about the relationship between Kathy, Ruth and Tommy. The disagreements they had over silly stuff. How they made up with each other. How they were there for each other in the good times or the bad times. Blah blah blah.
Dude, if I wanted to read a chic book I would have picked one up.
Science fiction? Only because the soap opera characters were called clones and made organ donations. Big deal...it was all about how the people made each other feel.
No. I will not recommend it. :-)
Wow, sounds like a lame one. Why a D and not an F?
ReplyDeleteF did not exist until I picked up that horrific Oliver Stone book. It was created specifically to address the atrociousness of that particular fiasco.
ReplyDeleteE was as low as I was goingto go. I did not figure that I should give this book an E because if I had known it was not a science fiction novel other than by stretching to get there, I might not have disliked it as much.
So, I felt like I just wasted my time reading it. I just wanted to get into some of the "why" things were. It never went there.
The weird thing is that the clone kids never really even cared much that they were not "real". Why didn't they run off and do their own thing? They thought they were human beings, why just accept one day that you are not and then fall in line with the being an organ farm junk? I would have been plotting my escape from the system. They never tried in all their lives. Silly.