Lately, I have been listening to a podcast called The Book Club, with Dominic Sandbrook of The Rest is History fame – a podcast I truly enjoy, and his sidekick Tabitha Syrett.
Because it’s a little pointless listening to a podcast about a book you haven’t read yet, another positive about this pod is that it has inspired me to start reading novels again. This is something I haven’t done much since working for the post office in Colorado, where letter carriers are authorized to skip their lunch breaks. That blessed half hour was where I used to do most of my reading, and where my sadly defunct Lunchtime Lit blog series took root.
The second novel reviewed on The Book Club podcast was Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, a British author born in Japan.
Although Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize in 2017 (eat your heart out Tronald Dump!), I confess I had never heard of him. But after reading Never Let Me Go, I am a true fan.
As a writer who dabbles in fiction myself, when I read I’m not only enjoying the story, but also examining the technique of the author, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously.
In this case, I quickly took conscious note of how Ishiguro reveals the mystery of his story layer by layer, a process that entices readers further in to see more, titillating us like a striptease. He does this right from the beginning, offering highly disturbing, deeply unsettling hints that make the reader say What the hell?, but leaving the big reveal until the end.
I dub this technique literary layering, but it’s probably got some other fancy, technical term, used among scholars and critics who have never composed a word of fiction themselves, but are skilled at analyzing the words of others to death, then organizing and quantifying them into categories that the authors never dreamed of while they were writing.
Don’t get me wrong, although Never Let Me Go was constructed with technical brilliance by Ishiguro, it delivers a superb emotional payoff.
So have you read it? What did you think? Let me know in the comments, please.
Image is the cover of Never Let Me Go (novel), by Kazuo Ishiguro. Via Wikipedia, artist unknown.
The thing is they never treated them like humans they were just clones just tools for others. Every time I think about this book it makes me sad but it also sparks empathy in my heart. Those who read heartbreaking books like this should feel how our emotions shift while reading and how love and compassion are the greatest offerings we can give. I read it years ago and reviewed it on Medium too. Not sure my memory is really a thing nowadays.
I really felt heartbroken by this book,too. Even though the cloned humans had their squabbles and petty jealousies too, that only made them more human, in my view.
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