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I've just completed this thrill-seeking meme. Thank you ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
oatmeal_texas for suggesting Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go: it was an enjoyable read.
The first funny thing I noticed about his style is that it's very similar to mine (if I can be so modest.) There was a quality to the narrative that was very dream-like, like those times you experience an entire lifetime in your sleep -- a bizarre world that has its own rules, its own sense, but which doesn't seem at all strage to you -- yet when you wake up, you realize it was just a figment of your imagination and that, on closer inspection, it's complete nonsense. It reminded me of this short story I wrote in university, about a man who lived at the bottom of a ship. Only one person, Skipper Twit, was allowed to visit him, to bring him meals or books. Although the story made sense in itself, you could never say that it would ever be possible in the real world (the other sailors would never allow that kind of situation, and why was that man living at the bottom of the boat anyways?) If you put my story under a lamp light, you'd see beams go through it like a piece of swiss cheese under interrogation. Similarly, there were so many plot holes in Never Let Me Go that it almost felt like you shouldn't pay attention to the why's and how's at all but try to understand the novel as a metaphor, or just a study on what it means to love.
The novel falls into what I would call the Distopia Genre: Brave New World, 1984, Oryx and Crake, The Man in the High Castle, Cloud Atlas and Blindness come to mind. I suppose critics, trying to avoid the Sci-Fi tag, would call it "Especulative Fiction". Kevin and I talked about this: Kevin thinks it's Sci-Fi if it talks about parallel worlds, or what-ifs, whereas I can see what the critics mean, that "Especulative Fiction" doesn't centre on the machinery or science that affects the world in question, but on the people and their feelings (though you could counter argue that Oryx and Crake breaks that norm); Sci-fi tends to have more cardboard-like characters, more emphasis on the "weirdness of it all" to the detriment of any feelings we might develop for the characters. The truth probably lies somewhere on the middle of this, like a big pile of neon goo that you can't hold in fear of it sucking your bones dry.
There were some moments that I caught myself choking up, pushing down a tear or two. I usually tend to be more creeped out than moved by this sort of fiction, so that, to me, shows what a good job Ishiguro did. I picked up the book on Saturday and never let it go. I even advertised it around the office; according to the office girls, some of Ishiguro's other novels are tearjerkers too. Hey, for this miserable weather, I can't think of anything better to accompany you in the Tube or into bed.
oatmeal_texas for suggesting Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go: it was an enjoyable read. The first funny thing I noticed about his style is that it's very similar to mine (if I can be so modest.) There was a quality to the narrative that was very dream-like, like those times you experience an entire lifetime in your sleep -- a bizarre world that has its own rules, its own sense, but which doesn't seem at all strage to you -- yet when you wake up, you realize it was just a figment of your imagination and that, on closer inspection, it's complete nonsense. It reminded me of this short story I wrote in university, about a man who lived at the bottom of a ship. Only one person, Skipper Twit, was allowed to visit him, to bring him meals or books. Although the story made sense in itself, you could never say that it would ever be possible in the real world (the other sailors would never allow that kind of situation, and why was that man living at the bottom of the boat anyways?) If you put my story under a lamp light, you'd see beams go through it like a piece of swiss cheese under interrogation. Similarly, there were so many plot holes in Never Let Me Go that it almost felt like you shouldn't pay attention to the why's and how's at all but try to understand the novel as a metaphor, or just a study on what it means to love.
The novel falls into what I would call the Distopia Genre: Brave New World, 1984, Oryx and Crake, The Man in the High Castle, Cloud Atlas and Blindness come to mind. I suppose critics, trying to avoid the Sci-Fi tag, would call it "Especulative Fiction". Kevin and I talked about this: Kevin thinks it's Sci-Fi if it talks about parallel worlds, or what-ifs, whereas I can see what the critics mean, that "Especulative Fiction" doesn't centre on the machinery or science that affects the world in question, but on the people and their feelings (though you could counter argue that Oryx and Crake breaks that norm); Sci-fi tends to have more cardboard-like characters, more emphasis on the "weirdness of it all" to the detriment of any feelings we might develop for the characters. The truth probably lies somewhere on the middle of this, like a big pile of neon goo that you can't hold in fear of it sucking your bones dry.
There were some moments that I caught myself choking up, pushing down a tear or two. I usually tend to be more creeped out than moved by this sort of fiction, so that, to me, shows what a good job Ishiguro did. I picked up the book on Saturday and never let it go. I even advertised it around the office; according to the office girls, some of Ishiguro's other novels are tearjerkers too. Hey, for this miserable weather, I can't think of anything better to accompany you in the Tube or into bed.
