Clearing out a few notes here so I can write about more current projects...

Recently (actually, it was a month or so ago now...) the BookerPrize group read Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. The novel explores a world of creation and utility in interesting ways; without giving away the full storyline, in an Orwellian twist, all people are equal, but some people are more equal than others.

NLMG is a dystopic novel in an interesting form, from my brief exposure to the genre. Most dystopic novels are about humans. NLMG is, literally a dystopic novel about the question of human vs non human, and human nature and creation.

Of particular note to this reader is the placement of people in realms of apartness; our primary character often makes her encounters in isolated and remote places (in the wilderness, at a boat capsized in the middle of a field). And we have repeated and telling scenes of disconnection, where the protaganist sits on the edges of highways (the paths where most people move from point to point), staring out of the windows of these roadway cafes of England (or something like England).

It's a good book, a fine enough read, and I still find myself playing with scenes to tease out the meaning. I found the larger message to be a bit hamhanded, but the interrelating messages at the interstices of Ishiguro's larger moral message - the interactions of people and experiences - to be deftly managed.

In the Sound Opinions scale of 'buy it, burn it or trash it' (which I will call 'buy it, borrow it (from the library) or trash it', I'd give this one a 'borrow it' ranking. It's not keeper literature, but its one to set on your nightstand for a week.

Posted by esinclai at February 16, 2006 09:39 PM |