Saturday, January 17, 2015

Review: Never Let Me Go

Picture this.  You're at the library and you're thinking "man, I want a book".  However, you don't know what kind of book you want.  You're not sure if you're into a book that is in your wheel house, like fantasy or sci-fi, or if you want something like a chick lit or romance.  Then you find this book that seems so strange.  There's a picture of people running on a deck and, on the back, just reviews about how good the book is.  How it's his best since Remains of the Day and you have this hazy memory about how it's a movie about something historical and bits of romance.  So you're all "oh, okay, I'll try it.'

And then you get home and you're 50 pages into it when someone asks "so, what's it about?" and you realize you have no idea.  There's a mystery about this book with no summary on the back or inside the first few pages.  All you know is that you have to figure out what Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy are learning.  How they're all connected.  What donors, carers, and this school is all about.  You think it might be about cancer patients and how it's about working through cancer.  However, you're proven wrong when you go to wikipedia and it says it's a dystopian science fiction story.  The appeal of the mystery is so strong that you don't want to read more of the article or the mystery will be broken.  So you just go back to the book to try to figure out what the hell is happening.

Here's a picture of the book so you know I'm not putting you on.  Also, after this, I get into spoilers for the book.  So, if you don't want to know any more until after you've read it (or seen the movie), I'd stop reading after you see the pictures.





Alright, everyone got that?  Starting the spoilers in 3...

2...

1...

Okay, spoilers.  The book is divided into three acts that go childhood, teenager/transition into adulthood, and adulthood.  It follows, for the most part, three characters: Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy.  They all go a school called Hailsham and the story is told from the memories of Kathy.  She's the main character in the end and the story is told in first person from her.  So we're getting her memories and, for the most part, she seems like a reliable narrator.  She's a carer, which does sound exactly like the title, and she's looking after donors.  Until you get more into the book, it seems like it's about people doing something nice for others which is what we think about when we see the name donor.  Or at least I do because you usually donate a kidney to someone who needs it.  Or you donate blood.  However, this seems to be a lot worse since people donate for what seems like a max of four times before they "complete".

We'll get to what complete means in a moment as I want to go back to the characters.  So, we start out seeing them as children in a school.  The teachers, for the most part, drop hints about what the characters are going to become.  I was kind of dense, as I didn't fully understand what they were really talking about until much later in the book.  There is one teacher, called Miss Lucy, who does try to spell it out for the kids.  However, due to this being child memory from Kathy (and Ruth a bit), it's not a good explanation.  So they have this nice quiet school life where they learn and do art where it gets taken away by Madame for her collection (again, explained later).  Tommy comes in as a child who doesn't / can't hold onto his temper.  Kathy, when she comes Tommy's carer, believes it's because of the fact that, on some level, he knew about what was coming.  So, there's kid problems and things with teachers, and you get the connection for the book title from a cassette tape called Songs After Dark by Judy Bridgewater (fictional artist).  We also have a scene where Kathy is dancing to the song while holding a pillow and Madame, the one in charge of Hailsham, watching her and crying.  When Kathy (along with Tommy) find Madame after Kathy becomes a carer, they have two different views of the scene.  Kathy thought Madame was crying because Madame couldn't have children.  Madame was really crying because she saw it as a young girl trying to hold onto an innocent world where there was little to no innocence in the world (paraphrasing here).  Now, before the end of the first part, Kathy does lose the tape and there's no finding it.  It's important for the next part, I swear.  So, that's childhood, from the memories of Kathy, Ruth, and a bit of Tommy.

The book goes into part two, where the characters (along with others), go to what is called the Cottages.  They meet two major characters there called Chrissy and Rodney, who are a tight knit couple.  The three mains - Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy - are together but also growing apart.  Tommy and Ruth became a couple in the last bit of being at Hailsham and it carried over to the Cottages.  Kathy, on the other hand, has a lot of one night stands and it was refreshing to see a female character do so without any sort of stigma attached.  Well, aside from Ruth, who was only doing it because she broke up with Tommy during that time and didn't want Kathy taking Tommy away.  During this time, the idea of "possibles" come to mind.  The "possibles" are the original version of the characters as you start to understand that they are actually clones.  It was probably given away before this time, but this is when I got hit over the head with it.  Chrissy and Rodney tell Ruth that they've found her "possible" working in a nice office building.  Funny thing is that Ruth had gone on and on about wanting to work in an office building.  So they go to Norfolk and search out the possible, and it seems likely, until Ruth goes off on a tantrum (seriously, that's the way it read / felt) about how they're not from those kind of people.  That they're from the trash of society and it just turns the entire visit sour.  So, while Chrissy, Rodney, and Ruth go off to meet a carer friend of the first two, Kathy and Tommy go off to find Kathy's tape.  They do find it, even thought Tommy wishes he could have found it first, and you get the first instance where Tommy has more feelings for Kathy than Ruth.  Which leads back to the idea of Ruth talking about Kathy's one night stands and her urges for sex being horrible because.. well, Ruth doesn't want to give up Tommy.  It's after the trip to Norfolk that Kathy decides to start her career as a carer.

Which leads into the third part of the book where we're a bit out of memories and more into what's happening in the present.  Ruth has done two donations and it seems to really take a toll on her but it seems normal to Kathy and Tommy.  Since it's never really said what the donations really are, it's kind of strange to think of someone dying from them.  I could see that if it was organs but, until that point, I really thought it was blood or marrow or something on a smaller scale.  However, it seems more like organ donation because of the toll shown on Ruth.  This is shown the best when they go out to see a boat that someone got caught in a marsh.  Nobody knows how, but it's the great attraction for miles around (don't ask, I don't get it either).  So you see Ruth having problems with breathing and Kathy being worried.  Ruth, at the end of the visit to the boat, tells Kathy she's sorry for keeping Tommy and Kathy apart.  Shortly after that, Ruth "completes".  

Quick note, because I said I'd get into this, but I'm not sure I like the word of "complete" being used for death.  For one, it doesn't make sense to me to talk about it this way unless you're making it nice.  For two... well, I just don't like it.  It feels uncomfortable and like you're skirting around the real issue.  That folds into the first issue I have with the word but I'm not the author and he went with it.  It's pretty good, unless you have issues, which I seem to.  Okay, tangent over.

So, after Ruth completes, Kathy goes to be Tommy's carer.  She's more than a carer, which makes me happy because it's a great "finally!" when it happens, but it comes with a price, of course.  That price goes into the last plot point of the novel, where they go to find Madame to try to get a pass for Tommy for his fourth donation.  See, the fourth donation usually meets he'll "complete", and, in a way, neither of them want to let go of what they have (woo, tying back into the title).  They go to meet Madame, thinking that she has this magical way of looking at the art from when they were children to show their souls are comparable to show they're really in love, which is the only way to get around the next donation.  Yeah, it would be a nice and magical ending, but this is dystopian so it won't go that way.  It turns out that the gallery was to show others that the clones have a soul and that they shouldn't just be used for spare parts.  After World War II, they found out how to clone and it turned into a way to cure cancer and other horrible diseases.  Who would really want to give that up, but Madame and the other teachers at the school were trying to show that it should be different.  It didn't go that way and, in the end, the school got shut down due to a scientist trying to make the clones into children that were better than the originals / possibles.  That was so not kosher and, due to this one scientist, the movement to show clones = humans too was shut down.  After that, everything does downhill with Tommy pushing Kathy away and Tommy having his fourth donation and then completing.  The novel ends with Kathy just wondering about what happens next and what will happen to her after she's done with being a carer in 8 months.

Now, this is a well written book.  If you don't look for certain clues, then you really don't know what's going to happen in the end.  Even after the ending, you don't know what's going to happen but you can guess.  I usually hate books like this (see the This is Where I Leave You review from November 2014) because I want definite endings.  However, I did like the fact that you didn't know what truly happened in the end.  I think the most common guess is that Kathy, like the others, turns from carer into donor.  I have a different guess.  I'm thinking that her possible doesn't get sick and she just spends out the rest of her days as at a center.  Or perhaps she does small donations but nothing that makes her complete so early.  I like the idea of a long life for her.  The movie, from what I'm reading on the Wikipedia page, goes in a different direction.  I doubt I'll see the movie, unless I happen to come across it somehow on cable, but I might go looking for it.

So, that's the book based on the cover.  Who knew that thinking that it was going to be this romance book turn into something completely different?  I think it might be something about like calling to like, due to the fact that one of my genres is sci-fi/fantasy and dystopian isn't all that bad either.  I might try this picking only on the cover thing again sometime and see if the same thing happens.  If I do, don't worry, I'll report back.  

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