I'm going to willfully spoil this book at this point without a cut tag, if only to warn other science fiction fans away from it.
The book opens up talking about "carers" and "donors" in England in the late 1990s, leading us to believe that this book is either alternate history or about some seedy underground practices that remained hidden to the mainstream. Then, it flashes back to the childhood of the protagonist, going on and on and on about childhood trivialities at the boarding school where she grew up. It's not until 1/4 of the way through the book that the children (and us) are told outright that they have no futures, and that once they become adults, they'll slowly have their organs harvested.
1/4 of the way through the book! Gah!
I've made it to the halfway point, and I still have no idea why people are being raised as organ donors. Why? Because the book is both claustrophobic in its focus, and the POV character is disinterested in the world outside. The claustrophobia comes in the settings. Part 1 takes place entirely on the grounds of the boarding school, and Part 2 takes place (so far) strictly at the protagonist's post-school home. We don't get to see what's happened to the rest of the world that's made them so desperate for organs that they've turned people into cattle. And the POV character (and just about all the other students around her) are given opportunity after opportunity to ask questions, but they don't. Worse, they then spend time privately mooning over why they didn't think to ask that question that they really wanted to have answered. What do they do? They worry about grades, teachers, and sex.
Bo-ring!
This is supposed to be science fiction! You're supposed to tell us all the cool stuff that's happening in this crazy world you've invented! If there's no compelling reason to keep something from the readers, then why on earth would you do so? That's why we read science fiction, after all. If I wanted to read teenagers worrying about grades, teachers, and sex, then I'd read a mainstream YA novel. And if I wanted to read about people having questions but being too lazy to ask them, then I'd read... No, I can't imagine wanting to read about that.
I'm done with this book. I'm going to look up spoilers on the internet to find out what happened to the world to make it so organ-hungry, and what Madame is doing with her art collection, and then I'm going to read some science fiction that isn't afraid of what it is.
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I admit, I was thinking I might be more of a suspense and 'hanging on in quiet desperation' fan than you here,('Remains of the Day' drove me nuts the first time, but is enjoyable second time through), but in fact, yeah, ick. The adolescent rambling narrative is excruciating in this.
But now I'll admit to heresy and note that I hated this aspect of Buffy too. I hate this 'voice' in general.
Don't count on any explanations from the net either. Just put it down. :)
Mind you, pay-per-view is the nice, lazy option :)
Musicians seem to do it a lot. (Techno? Rubbish. It just goes 'momp momp momp', there's no skill to it, etc.)
It fails a bit with art, mind. (But a child of five could have done that!)
*But I'm not as closely tied to an identity as either a genre reader or writer these days -- in fact, the stuff I'm writing at present is only vaguely genre if at all -- so that may be coloring my perception. I certainly understand why people get pissed off about mainstream authors co-opting SFnal ideas but still trying to relegate SF authors to the genre ghetto.
For one, if this book proves to be a "starter book" that drags non-Sci-Fi readers into checking out harder Sci-Fi, then I am all for it. I think the same could be said of The Time Traveler's Wife, for example. Sometimes, I enjoy laughing at people who were "suckered" into one story, only to find out by the end that it was Sci-Fi all along (re: Vanilla Sky, a "chick-flick" that takes a rather hard Sci-Fi turn - I can only imagine how date night turned out when unsuspecting parties realized that the movie wasn't just another Tom Cruise suspense-romantic-whatever film).
Secondly, sometimes I find it refreshing to see that the human condition, complete with mundane concerns, remains intact even in a world of Sci-Fi. Granted, this has been done many times to great success even in the midst of the most alien landscapes, but every now and then I like to see that humans in alternate timelines or the future still wrestle with sex issues, racism, financial strife and other societal ills that seemingly were (largely) wiped out in, say, Star Trek; The Next Generation.
Still, a boring story is a boring story no matter the trappings. That's arguably the biggest sin an author could commit in any tale.
- James -
- James -
From Atwood's site:
http://www.spacesquid.com/
But it is important, I think, to know that Ishiguro himself did not see Never Let Me Go as a sci-fi novel. I see this less as a genre fail than a misrepresentation to readers by forces outside Ishiguro's control. That it was touted by many as sci-fi reveals either the industry inability to see past genre tropes (OMG CLONES!) or fans so pleased to see a sci-fi trope used in a literary novel meant to be a character exploration that they missed the true purpose of the book and recommended it to others as a sci-fi book. Had someone told you that this was more in the tradition of Dostoevsky or Kafka, I think that would have been a far better representation of the book.
My two cents.
So, having read Remains Of the Day, my expectations were that it would be mostly told in flashback. That it would be written in first person, but that I would find the supporting characters more interesting than the protagonist. That there would be lots of lyrical musings on identity, nostalgia, lost opportunities and the nature of memory. That the protagonist would be entirely wrapped up in their interactions with the other characters and oblivious to important political events except as they related to those characters. That the protagonist would also be deliberately selecting which memories were presented to the reader and that the key to understanding the book would be realising what had been left out and why. That there would be doomed love and a bittersweet ending.
I can see how it would be annoying if you went in expecting a sci-fi examination of cloning and got endless flashbacks of self-absorbed characters and failed relationships, but if you go into it expecting those things? It really is an awesome book.
But clearly, I am in the minority (although perhaps not in this thread) in that opinion.
Which then makes me think about how I may have been co-opted into doing the same thing myself.
I find his stuff profoundly political in the deepest of ways, which could be part of why I love his work so much.
I agree he takes a long time to give you enough through the limited viewpoint of the POV characters so you can see what lies behind their own, generally quite limited interests and lives.
He's all about people not daring to examine their circumstances and being afraid to challenge themselves. Depressing and maddening, but I still like it.