Views from Medina Road

Sunday, April 17, 2005

Ishiguro

Finished reading today Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, a literary novel with a skiffy premise at its core, to the shock and dismay of some mainstream critics. It's a fine, subtle novel about the experience of growing up without fully understanding one's destiny, and it might well be a case study in how a fairly ordinary (and not entirely plausible) SF premise is mined for the close attention to character and detail that typifies your average literary novel. I haven't yet seen a review from an informed SFnal perspective that explores the plausibility of its premise.. has anyone seen one? I'm tempted to commission one.. nor have I seen a review that understands the broader implications of its thesis -- that everyone's life is lived without fully understanding its role in the larger scheme of things. A necessary aspect of human existence; a lesson that science fiction, as a literary form, is all about.

2 comments 11:47 PM

Comments:

I agree with most of what you say, but ...

Is sf really all about *not* fully understanding your place in the larger scheme of things? There are certainly books for which that's true, but as a general rule, if anything, I think I'd lean in the opposite direction--where do conceptual breakthroughs come from if not from realisation/understanding? That said, *this* novel is certainly about a lack of understanding, and very perceptive on that score.

I also think that it doesn't matter so much whether or not NLMG is plausible. The answer is probably that it is not, but there are so few details to go on--we have no idea exactly what is donated and how they survive each time, for instance--that it's really impossible to tell.

FWIW, my review is here: http://coalescent.livejournal.com/200506.html

-- Niall

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:15 AM

On the matter of plausibility, my thought is that that's why Ishiguro placed the book in an 'alternate' 1990s, presuming the whole cloning scheme had got its start back in the cold war '50s--when governments might have gotten away with such things. In today's climate of suspicion and fear about every new technological option, especially about reproductive issues, no one would believe such a program could be started *now*.

# posted by

Mark Kelly : 10:43 AM