Never let me go by Kazuo
Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go by Japanese-born Englishman Kazuo Ishiguro, award-winning
author
of The Remains of the
Day, is a very good science fiction novel. I'll tell you why
it is
very good in a moment, but first let's talk about why it is science
fiction, so
I can get this big chip off my shoulder.
Never Let
Me Go is entirely
premised
upon the existence of a technology that does not yet exist in reality.
That makes it science fiction, in the same way The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells is science fiction.
What's
more, Never Let Me Go is set in an
alternate
universe in which history has taken a different course, which also
makes it
science fiction, just as The
Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (in which the Allies lost
World
War II) is science fiction.
Successful mainstream writers often find
themselves drifting into science fiction, to take advantage of the
broad range
of concepts and metaphors it allows. In the past couple years, such
acclaimed authors as Margaret Atwood, Philip Roth, David Mitchell, and
Michael
Cunningham have all written science fiction. All of these works were
published
as mainstream fiction, however, since publishers categorize books not by
content, but by what they think will maximize sales. This is
irritating,
because it creates the false impression that well-written fiction
cannot be
science fiction.
Similarly, whenever a successful
mainstream writer
dabbles in science fiction, mainstream critics circle the wagons and
join in
the preposterous assertion that what the author has written isn't really
science fiction at all. This is even more infuriating, for whereas
publishers are trying to make a buck, we can attribute critics'
assumption that
serious literature cannot be science fiction to nothing but ignorant
prejudice.
Never Let
Me Go is set in the
late
1990's, but in an alternate universe in which biological technology has
advanced more rapidly than in our world. In this alternate version of
the
1990's, society raises human clones to maturity in order to kill them
and
harvest their organs. The novel's main characters are all young clones
awaiting their destiny.
This is science fiction by any
conceivable
definition, but mainstream critics absurdly pretend that it is not.
Most
of them offer no logical justification, they simply assume implicitly
that a
book like Never Let Me Go cannot be
science
fiction because it isn't crap and science fiction is always crap. Of
course, they haven't read enough modern science fiction to know that
it's crap,
but they've heard each other say so often enough that it must be true.
Sarah Kerr in the New York Times Book Review goes so far as to
suggest
that this crappiness is in part what Never Let
Me Go is about, that
Ishiguro is using science fiction elements in order to quietly upend the
genre's "banal conventions." Don't hold your breath waiting for
her to give any examples of these "banal conventions" from the past
thirty years, because she can't. Rest assured that if
Never Let Me Go had been written, with the same lack of
banality, by a genre SF writer like Connie Willis or James Morrow or
Lisa
Goldstein, Kerr and the other mainstream reviewers would have been very
pleased
to label it science fiction and then never read
it.
Little better are the critics who
actually
attempt to distinguish a book like Never Let
Me Go from the
science
fiction field. Their argument goes something like this: Ishiguro isn't
writing about the science of cloning, he is writing about real human
issues.
Caryn James of the New York Times (yes, that's a different
Times
review of Never Let Me Go – the
Times
printed three of them, totaling more column-inches than they have
allowed their
token science fiction reviewer Gerald Jonas, God bless him, in the past
six
months combined) smugly assures us that Never Let
Me Go is not "genre fiction," i.e., science fiction,
because it "use[s] cloning as a way to get at profound emotions of love
and loss, and to address a mechanized culture in which individuality
itself
sometimes seems threatened." Sorry, Caryn, but that's precisely why
it is science fiction. Good science fiction takes us into a
different reality to give us new insights into the human condition.
Indeed, all of the classics of science fiction involving cloning – Where Late the Sweet
Birds Sang
by Kate Wilhelm and "Nine
Lives" by Ursula K.
LeGuin, for
example – are about real human issues. Who on earth would want to write
or read a novel about the science of cloning? If you think that's what
authors in the science fiction genre are writing, then you don't know
what
you're talking about, and you should shut up.
Sometimes when mainstream writers
dabble in
science fiction, they combine the worst excesses and failings of
mainstream
fiction with clumsy handling of the SF elements – see for example my
review of
Margaret Atwood's atrocious
Ishiguro presents the SF elements of
Never Let Me Go in a very understated manner. The
story
is told through the quiet reminiscences of first-person narrator Kathy
H., a
thirty-one year-old "carer," awaiting her turn to be a
"donor." The novel dwells at length on Kathy's formative years
at Hailsham, a British boarding school, and then at a communal home
called the
Cottages. It all seems a rather ordinary lifestory, until the reader
gradually realizes that the unfamiliar terms Kathy throws around are
euphemisms
cloaking her world's murderous system in which cloned humans care for
slightly
older clones, each in turn donating their vital organs until their
inevitable
deaths, usually before they even reach thirty years of
age.
By giving us this horrific background
in such a
matter-of-fact way, Ishiguro preserves a realistic feel to the story.
By
the same token, he tells us the setting is the 1990's not because he
wants to
create a detailed alternate history, but so we will think of Hailsham as
existing in a world much like ours. Similarly, I suspect he waits to
tell
us directly that his characters are clones not to spring a great
surprise, but
simply so that by the time we realize what is going on, we will already
have
come to view the characters' lives as not so different from our
own.
Thus, the anecdotes about early
childhood
friendships and squabbles at Hailsham are comparable to what might
occur at any
boarding school, except that no one ever mentions their families.
Ishiguro so deftly puts us into the mind of Kathy H. that these
passages never
become tedious. They would make for interesting reading even if the
book
were stripped of the SF elements.
At times it seems peculiar for Kathy's
life to
be so ordinary. Even as they mature, Kathy and her friends express no
outrage against the cruel system imposed on them, nor does it ever
occur to
them to rebel or escape before their vital organs are claimed. They
have
access to a car, but they use it to go shopping, to see the
countryside, once
to look for one girl's "original," but never to try to get
away. Perhaps this shows a lack of initiative, but Ishiguro treats it
as
something admirable. Despite their hopeless situation, these young
clones
are brave and spirited enough to pursue the same sort of friendships,
loves,
and impossible dreams for the future that drive the rest of us, often
just as
hopelessly.
Much of the novel focuses on the mutual
jealousy between Kathy and her best friend Ruth over an awkward but
well-meaning boy named Tommy. Any young woman in the real world could
find herself in such a love triangle, but matters are more desperate
for Kathy
and Ruth, who know they have precious little time to work with. In
addition, many of the clones share a foolish hope, based on rumor and
speculation, that the nameless powers running their brutal system will
grant a
temporary reprieve to clones who are deeply in love. It is thus
especially poignant when Kathy and Ruth realize how they have disrupted
one
another's best chance for love. Yet is it any less sad when an
opportunity for love is lost in our world?
This kind of insight into our real
lives makes Never Let Me Go powerful to read despite its simple
plot. Kathy and her friends suffer the sort of conflicts that could
happen to any of us, but knowing that they are doomed to an early death
heightens the impact of their troubles. But on further reflection, we
realize that our lot is not so very different from theirs, even if it
may take
eighty years to play out instead of thirty.
The title of Never Let Me
Go is taken from Kathy's favorite song, by make-believe folk
singer
Judy Bridgewater. Kathy listens to the song while dancing and holding a
pillow that she imagines to be a baby. This is a sad image, for she can
never have a real baby. More to the point, she has never been held as a
child, never had a mother she could ask not to let her go. Though she
soldiers on, tending to her dying fellows without complaint, Kathy's
silent
dance betrays how greatly she is in need of tenderness. Aren't we all?
Hughes,Aaron.“Never Let Me Go by Kazuo
Ishiguro“<htt
p://www.geocities.com/fantasticreviews/never_let_me_go.htm>
Alfred A. Knopf hardcover - Copyright
2005
288 pages
Cover photograph by Lieutenant-Colonel
Mervyn
O'Gorman
Book reviewed May 2005
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