This was our book club selection last month; unfortunately, I didn’t finish it before our book club met, but fortunately, that never matters, because unfortunately we barely talk about the book. I love the group of women in our little ‘club,’ they’re very smart, and very opinionated. Manhattanites, in other words. Many of them work in publishing – an accident of convenience you know. Last time we all traveled out to QUEENS…another borough, for heaven’s sake, which was too much for some members of our group. One woman seems to think Brooklyn and Queens are the same place.

Anyway. Silliness. I absolutely loved this book, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I somehow missed knowing anything about it when it was first published back in 2005. I missed the hubbub when it was nominated for the Booker prize. What was I doing then? But that’s the great thing about books, isn’t it; they’re always there, once they exist. So five years later, I can find it and fall into its spell the same as if I’d read it back in 2005.

The book unfolds such a little bit at a time. There are clues, cues, sinister little snippets, you know something is very wrong but you don’t quite know what. You begin to get a creepy idea about what’s going on, and it all comes together pretty slowly. The writing isn’t particularly lyrical, but that’s not the point anyway. The main character, Kath, tells the story and in the way people really do tell stories, she’ll start, then double back, then say “but I need to tell you this first.” It works.

As I was reading, I kept thinking of Blade Runner – I’m surprised no one mentioned in during the 2.5 minutes we discussed the book. I don’t want to give away the plot, if you haven’t read it (I heartily recommend the book!), but one of the big questions of the book is what constitutes a life? What constitutes a meaningful life? A valuable life – and what does “valuable” mean, anyway? I thought a lot about free will.

I think this book is meant to be a horror, a signpost pointing toward a dreadful future, signaling “watch out! you’d better think about what you’re doing or you’ll end up here!” It made me think of The Handmaid’s Tale, in that way. For some reason, it didn’t have that effect on me. I guess I’ve lived long enough to know that things work like this; that we get so dazzled by what we can do, that those who come up with new technologies just dazzle us with all the good stuff and never mention the darker possibilities of it, and we all tag along with dazzle in our eyes. So I wasn’t as horrified by the future shock of it as perhaps I was intended to be. Instead, it made me think about what life is for US, for me, now. It made me think about our human illusions, the little ideas we have without realizing we have them, unquestioned, unexplored.

Now when a book does that, that’s pretty great. And while reading, I finished 1.25 sleeves of my Peasy sweater…..BONUS!

.