In the finsished column: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Never Let Me Go cover

This book made it to my “to read” pile after I read some very positive reviews and after months of the book sitting insistently atop my Amazon recommendations. It was also a birthday gift. The book does have a surprise or twist element to it. So if this book is in your “to read” stack, you may not want to read further.

So you couldn’t resist, eh? OK. Here’s the deal. The book begins at an English boarding school in the mid-Nineties. It appears to be your typical boarding school, except something seems to be not quite right. The teachers are hiding something from the students, or at least not telling them everything that they should know. And then, slowly it is revealed. The students are all clones who are being raised to be adults who will then donate an organ at a time to those of us who need them and are, you know - normal.

The kids are raised to eventually become “carers” for their kind who begin the donations in a sequence that usually ends in “completion” after four donations. The book mentions in passing that they came up with the technology before thinking through the implications of what all this would mean. Are they really human? etc. However, once the genie was out of the bottle, there was no going back. Once your wife got a new heart, you wouldn’t really care where it came from.

The author also wrote Remains of the Day. If you saw the movie, or read the book, you may have a good feel for what the writing and tone of the book were like. It also reminded me of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s an interesting book that makes you think about some of the questions that may be coming our way before too long.

Let me preface the following comments with this : I enjoyed the book. I really did. However, its not the same book that I would have written, given the same premise. I’m not sure why the author chose to set the book in the 1990’s. Does that make it Not Science Fiction? Or because the time has already passed, it should be pretty clear that this is Fiction? The book doesn’t describe in any way the elaborate social control measures that would need to be taken to subdue the future organ donors or hide them from our recoiling view. In fact, as adults they seem to be able to roam around and have lives, cars, apartments, etc. So I kept asking myself what keeps them there? Why not keep on driving through the Chunnel and kick it in France. You want my organs - you’ll have to find me first. Where was the clone uprising against the organ-needing oppressors? It seems the author wanted to steer well clear of anything that might suggest science fiction. OK. Whatever. The book also doesn’t spell out the order of the donations, but it seems like they were all internal organs. Why not things like eyes, hands, or skin - things that would have kept them alive, possibly disfigured, beyond the three of four typical donations. These kinds of donations would have made them even freakier. Too Science Fiction?

Maybe I’ll write that book. It will feature a maverick organ donor of Cajun ancestry who drives his car through the Chunnel and lives in France with his limbless friend with no eyes who escaped by Fed-Ex-ing himself to Cannes. Yeah. I don’t want to give away all of the plot. Look for it soon wherever fine books are sold.

Note: I finished this book at the end of June. As I mentioned in another post, between baseball and the Tour, I am falling way behind in reading and posting. Thanks to Shaft for taking up some of the slack. The All Star Break is here and the Tour has a rest day, so it is catch up time. Also, Hurricane Fuckstick has canceled my vacation. Thanks for that.