Was reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go”, and am struggling to find words to describe it. Its haunting, its scary, and its really really creepy. What makes it so? Why does it keep me awake at night, grappling with the memories of some “students” in a book?
It starts off as a boarding school story, a world of children growing up, becoming friends, dealing with their “guardians”. All of them are aware that they are not destined for the usual world, the everyday world outside. But the focus is on interpersonal relationships that draw you in, make you involved in their stories, their little gains and losses, the preparation for the world outside. They seem a little deprived, in some way, more evidenced by their joy in little things than any major cruelty they suffer. Their dreams are small : “to work in an open office space”, “to become a fireman”, “to have a relationship with a loved one”, but at the outset, it is clear that these dreams are out of reach for them. They are hoping for the impossible. You root for them, you find yourself turning pages to see if any of them “make it in life” if their love stories work out, if somehow, anyhow, humanity does not fail them.
But it is , of course, impossible. They know it, and you as the reader, know it too. For one thing, the “students” are clones. Created, educated and prepared for one reason: their vital organs are needed for transplants for “normal” people. They are aware of what they are and why they exist, right from the time they are children. What is brought out in the course of the novel is “who” they are: real people, with hopes and feelings and joy and sorrow and a heart-rending acceptance of their function in life. Ishiguro’s genius lies in the fact that he doesn’t linger on their being clones, on their status, first as “carers”, then as “donors”, and finally, that they “complete” after their second, third or fourth “donation”. These are incidental to the main story, which is about people complete in themselves, just existing to make life possible for others to survive, live and prosper.
It brings to mind all the occasions, past, present and future, where being human in not enough.
If Orwell’s 1984 was scary enough, 20XX is way more so. Where is science taking us? In its search for the cure for disease, in its denial of old age and in its giddy intoxication with itself and its own advances…
I can’t recommend that you read this book, or not read it. I just had to write about it, get it out there, so I don’t think about it so much.
