Book talk
My tags are now editable by others. I am indeed that bored.
Warning: So much rambling ahead, even I surprised myself with how much. Hope, humanity, perspective, and identity. Important sounding words, you know, and they all appear below.
Spoilery, although I've missed the boat on all the discussion surrounding this story.
This is the first novel I've read by Kazuo Ishiguru in 8-9 years, the others being A Pale View Of Hills and An Artist Of The Floating World. My impressions of NLMG may be influenced by my faded memories of those two novels, but considering unreliable recollection is this novel, perhaps that's apt. I nearly bought a copy of The Remains Of The Day but decided I wasn't in the right frame of mind for its subject matter, so ended up with Never from the library. I must admit that it being free, and wanting to read all the discussion about it on my flist (albeit, some of it over a year ago), were deciding factors.
Initial impressions were disappointing. I found the opening dull and struggled to get through early chapters of the book. Although I realise that the sterility was a key factor in this, all this talk of donors and carers didn't compel or fascinate me for some time.
Looking back on it, analysing it that way, is actually more interesting than how it felt reading the book at times. But only at times. Kathy H, the POV narrator with muted but not non-existent emotion, made it difficult to empathise and to care for her or the other character beyond a general sympathy for the limitations of their lives. It became interesting when seeing the glimpses of conflict, denial, 'love', and hope of the others through her almost cold narrative. Like Kathy and Tommy in the shop, he so desperately wanting to buy the music tape for her, and they have a small 'moment', which I think shows how close they come to love. It's out of reach for them, like trying to build up a picture of something that's at a distance in a fog. Their emotions just can't get that far, perhaps because of their closeted environment, perhaps because of what they are. There's a connection there, definitely more than either of them have with Ruth, but not True Love.
Then again, maybe that's just Kathy. Tommy does appear to feel much more than the others, and from near the beginning of the book you can see he's keen on Kathy. You can see that even through Kathy's often passionless, though not emotionless, narration, he develops strong feelings for her. Not to mention those 'tantrums' he has growing up, and the very real anger and pain he shouts out at the end once the hope is destroyed. However, he's not a fully developed character, and so his humanity can never be fully defined. This lack of development is something that strikes all characters and left me cold. It's deliberate and ties in with what the novel is about, what it means to be human and how these characters were limited by their circumstances and genetics, but it doesn't make me want to pick up and re-read it.
While Hailsham, while the world of the clones, was indeed sterilised and protected from uncomfortable truths, and those outside wondered about their 'souls', the characters were not devoid of emotion like robots. They had hope, they created hope to help deal with the morbid fate awaiting them, a very human concept indeed. Denial is a key part of this, as seen when they are unable to ask further questions when Miss Lucy opens up to them. They never ask too much, never talk too much of the details of the strange future awaiting them, and are encouraged, perhaps conditioned, not to.
Sort of strayed from my point there.... When the hope is taken from them, when denial cannot be used as a buffer, the spirit of possibility dies, like it would with anyone. Ruth building up this dream of working in an open plan office that is further supported by a 'possible' living that life, who ends up representing Ruth's future, but then she sees that hopeful dream fade, the denial fade, when the 'possible' appears unlikely to be linked to her. Hope is shattered for Kathy and Tommy, too, when they find out there is no deferral.
Is this denial, is this sheltering good, as Miss Emily believes, or bad, as Miss Lucy believed? Is it as black and white as that? The sheltering may have helped make them happy in childhood, but part of growing up involves discovering the world around you, even if the truth of it is ugly and disillusioning. It is true that there were some unhappy revelations, but these were still few. That may be part of what makes the main characters, and of course the clones, different is not whether they lack 'soul' but were never fully allowed to grow up and realise what was to become of them. The denial of their future, and sheltering of them from it, the inability to get a broader perspective, that brings with it maturity, the lack of a true psychological development, means a lack of true moral development, and any questioning of the life they lead, that they've been told to lead. They just take it on board that this is the way it'll be. They never see another side to it, never critically analyse it, just accept. Is it all down to environment, though, or would they have lacked it, anyway?
Why did it take so long for Tommy and Kathy so long to get together? Perhaps the same denial, the same inaction in their own lives concerning their feelings over their future patterned their behaviour so that inaction concerning their feelings over romance was inevitable. Then again, in the 'normal' world, inaction, missed opportunities, not saying something at the right time, letting moments pass instead of grabbing them, are not rare.
And why stay friends with someone as manipulative as Ruth, who only repents at the end? At one point, Kathy is ostracised from Ruth and her group of guardians, and when someone else who was also rejected, Moira B., criticises, Kathy reacts angrily to someone who could have be an ally and defends the group.
What it is, I suppose, is that Moira was suggesting she and I cross some line together, and I wasn't prepared for that yet. I think I sensed how beyond that lines, there was something harder and darker and I didn't want that. Not for me, not for any of us.
Kathy does mention instead it was probably out of loyalty to Ruth. However, later on, when talking about Ruth after the revelations about the school and the deferral, Tommy says to Kathy:
You and me, right from the start, even when we were little, we were always trying to find things out. Remember, Kath, all those secret talks we used to have? But Ruth wasn't like that. She always wanted to believe in things.
That could have been what appealed about Ruth, that her belief, her lack of questioning, was something that Kathy needed, and that she didn't want to cross the line. A dark line that meant dwelling further on why Madame would be scared of the students like they were spiders.
Going back to the school environment and the topic of maturity, not to mention the greyness of the characters' personalities, another part of growing up, of truly thinking for yourself, is developing your own identity and opinions. The characters defined themselves through groups rather than individuals, the most obvious being Ruth but all of them were like that. When these group dynamics were off-balanced, so the characters themselves were, too. None more so than in Kathy, who defines herself with her Hailsham memories, and is quite perturbed when Tommy identifies more with his fellow doners than with her. Earlier on, when the Hailsham students arrive at the cottages, the significance of the group dynamics is immediately obvious and defines the characters to a degree. To be fair, group psychology will affect us all but the thin sketching of even the POV character shows us that it means even more to the donors.
I'm not saying, through all of this, that no one questioned, no one ever had their own thoughts, no one ever had a nasty shock of reality, but it wasn't frequent, and the questions never went too far or dug too deep until the revelatory ending. The cloning, caring world was not 100% cut-off but it was still sterilised and muffled to a significant degree, leaving the characters not fully fleshed out people. The 'real world' couldn't cope with their existence as people just like them, and the consequences of that they never had the potential to develop as people just like the rest.
Ishiguru's deceptively simple style of writing seems ever the more cold and detached in the POV of Kathy and it works quite effectively for the point he's making. There are some thought-provoking ideas in there but I still prefer more empathetic characters. The 'revelation' toward the end was clumsily handled and, even though it was a shortish book, sometimes I felt like it was repeating itself. All in all, I don't know how I managed to write so much about something that if this had not been a short novel, I probably would not have persevered with it. Maybe Ishiguru novels just have a rambly effect on me since I wrote a dissertation on the others.
(A sort of an aside, a character's memories of the past that are most likely not accurate, and their overwhelming importance to that character, were structured to tell most of this story, and memories of the past were key in the other two Ishiguru novels I've read. Hmm, wonder if similar is as important in The Remains of the Day, or if it works differently.)
I can only hope my thoughts made some sense there and it's not totally littered with mistakes. It's been a long time since I wrote like that about a novel.
Warning: So much rambling ahead, even I surprised myself with how much. Hope, humanity, perspective, and identity. Important sounding words, you know, and they all appear below.
Spoilery, although I've missed the boat on all the discussion surrounding this story.
This is the first novel I've read by Kazuo Ishiguru in 8-9 years, the others being A Pale View Of Hills and An Artist Of The Floating World. My impressions of NLMG may be influenced by my faded memories of those two novels, but considering unreliable recollection is this novel, perhaps that's apt. I nearly bought a copy of The Remains Of The Day but decided I wasn't in the right frame of mind for its subject matter, so ended up with Never from the library. I must admit that it being free, and wanting to read all the discussion about it on my flist (albeit, some of it over a year ago), were deciding factors.
Initial impressions were disappointing. I found the opening dull and struggled to get through early chapters of the book. Although I realise that the sterility was a key factor in this, all this talk of donors and carers didn't compel or fascinate me for some time.
Looking back on it, analysing it that way, is actually more interesting than how it felt reading the book at times. But only at times. Kathy H, the POV narrator with muted but not non-existent emotion, made it difficult to empathise and to care for her or the other character beyond a general sympathy for the limitations of their lives. It became interesting when seeing the glimpses of conflict, denial, 'love', and hope of the others through her almost cold narrative. Like Kathy and Tommy in the shop, he so desperately wanting to buy the music tape for her, and they have a small 'moment', which I think shows how close they come to love. It's out of reach for them, like trying to build up a picture of something that's at a distance in a fog. Their emotions just can't get that far, perhaps because of their closeted environment, perhaps because of what they are. There's a connection there, definitely more than either of them have with Ruth, but not True Love.
Then again, maybe that's just Kathy. Tommy does appear to feel much more than the others, and from near the beginning of the book you can see he's keen on Kathy. You can see that even through Kathy's often passionless, though not emotionless, narration, he develops strong feelings for her. Not to mention those 'tantrums' he has growing up, and the very real anger and pain he shouts out at the end once the hope is destroyed. However, he's not a fully developed character, and so his humanity can never be fully defined. This lack of development is something that strikes all characters and left me cold. It's deliberate and ties in with what the novel is about, what it means to be human and how these characters were limited by their circumstances and genetics, but it doesn't make me want to pick up and re-read it.
While Hailsham, while the world of the clones, was indeed sterilised and protected from uncomfortable truths, and those outside wondered about their 'souls', the characters were not devoid of emotion like robots. They had hope, they created hope to help deal with the morbid fate awaiting them, a very human concept indeed. Denial is a key part of this, as seen when they are unable to ask further questions when Miss Lucy opens up to them. They never ask too much, never talk too much of the details of the strange future awaiting them, and are encouraged, perhaps conditioned, not to.
Sort of strayed from my point there.... When the hope is taken from them, when denial cannot be used as a buffer, the spirit of possibility dies, like it would with anyone. Ruth building up this dream of working in an open plan office that is further supported by a 'possible' living that life, who ends up representing Ruth's future, but then she sees that hopeful dream fade, the denial fade, when the 'possible' appears unlikely to be linked to her. Hope is shattered for Kathy and Tommy, too, when they find out there is no deferral.
Is this denial, is this sheltering good, as Miss Emily believes, or bad, as Miss Lucy believed? Is it as black and white as that? The sheltering may have helped make them happy in childhood, but part of growing up involves discovering the world around you, even if the truth of it is ugly and disillusioning. It is true that there were some unhappy revelations, but these were still few. That may be part of what makes the main characters, and of course the clones, different is not whether they lack 'soul' but were never fully allowed to grow up and realise what was to become of them. The denial of their future, and sheltering of them from it, the inability to get a broader perspective, that brings with it maturity, the lack of a true psychological development, means a lack of true moral development, and any questioning of the life they lead, that they've been told to lead. They just take it on board that this is the way it'll be. They never see another side to it, never critically analyse it, just accept. Is it all down to environment, though, or would they have lacked it, anyway?
Why did it take so long for Tommy and Kathy so long to get together? Perhaps the same denial, the same inaction in their own lives concerning their feelings over their future patterned their behaviour so that inaction concerning their feelings over romance was inevitable. Then again, in the 'normal' world, inaction, missed opportunities, not saying something at the right time, letting moments pass instead of grabbing them, are not rare.
And why stay friends with someone as manipulative as Ruth, who only repents at the end? At one point, Kathy is ostracised from Ruth and her group of guardians, and when someone else who was also rejected, Moira B., criticises, Kathy reacts angrily to someone who could have be an ally and defends the group.
What it is, I suppose, is that Moira was suggesting she and I cross some line together, and I wasn't prepared for that yet. I think I sensed how beyond that lines, there was something harder and darker and I didn't want that. Not for me, not for any of us.
Kathy does mention instead it was probably out of loyalty to Ruth. However, later on, when talking about Ruth after the revelations about the school and the deferral, Tommy says to Kathy:
You and me, right from the start, even when we were little, we were always trying to find things out. Remember, Kath, all those secret talks we used to have? But Ruth wasn't like that. She always wanted to believe in things.
That could have been what appealed about Ruth, that her belief, her lack of questioning, was something that Kathy needed, and that she didn't want to cross the line. A dark line that meant dwelling further on why Madame would be scared of the students like they were spiders.
Going back to the school environment and the topic of maturity, not to mention the greyness of the characters' personalities, another part of growing up, of truly thinking for yourself, is developing your own identity and opinions. The characters defined themselves through groups rather than individuals, the most obvious being Ruth but all of them were like that. When these group dynamics were off-balanced, so the characters themselves were, too. None more so than in Kathy, who defines herself with her Hailsham memories, and is quite perturbed when Tommy identifies more with his fellow doners than with her. Earlier on, when the Hailsham students arrive at the cottages, the significance of the group dynamics is immediately obvious and defines the characters to a degree. To be fair, group psychology will affect us all but the thin sketching of even the POV character shows us that it means even more to the donors.
I'm not saying, through all of this, that no one questioned, no one ever had their own thoughts, no one ever had a nasty shock of reality, but it wasn't frequent, and the questions never went too far or dug too deep until the revelatory ending. The cloning, caring world was not 100% cut-off but it was still sterilised and muffled to a significant degree, leaving the characters not fully fleshed out people. The 'real world' couldn't cope with their existence as people just like them, and the consequences of that they never had the potential to develop as people just like the rest.
Ishiguru's deceptively simple style of writing seems ever the more cold and detached in the POV of Kathy and it works quite effectively for the point he's making. There are some thought-provoking ideas in there but I still prefer more empathetic characters. The 'revelation' toward the end was clumsily handled and, even though it was a shortish book, sometimes I felt like it was repeating itself. All in all, I don't know how I managed to write so much about something that if this had not been a short novel, I probably would not have persevered with it. Maybe Ishiguru novels just have a rambly effect on me since I wrote a dissertation on the others.
(A sort of an aside, a character's memories of the past that are most likely not accurate, and their overwhelming importance to that character, were structured to tell most of this story, and memories of the past were key in the other two Ishiguru novels I've read. Hmm, wonder if similar is as important in The Remains of the Day, or if it works differently.)
I can only hope my thoughts made some sense there and it's not totally littered with mistakes. It's been a long time since I wrote like that about a novel.