Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go

Published: 2005

The premise of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go poses a disturbing question to the reader: if you, or your partner or child, needed an organ transplant to live, to what extent would you be willing to turn a blind eye to where the replacement organ came from? In this alternative version of contemporary Britain, cloned humans have been raised for organ harvest for decades and – as we discover – most people choose to either remain wilfully ignorant of where the organs are coming from, or to deny humanity to cloned donors.

                The story follows Kathy, now thirty-one, from the age of about twelve. At first, Hailsham School, where the first part is set, appears to be an idyllic boarding school with a focus on creativity. Kathy develops friendships with volatile-tempered Tommy, and the manipulative Ruth. But from the outset, references to guardians, donors, and carers hint that something is not quite right. As the story progresses, the three central characters leave Hailsham and, in the wider world, discover more about their place in society and the grim fate of ‘completion’ that has always awaited them.

                The novel has two principal strengths. Firstly, the dystopian, sci-fi premise is intriguing. Unlike other dystopias, such as the ultra-conservative patriarchy in Margaret Atwood’s A Hand Maid’s Tale, it is not immediately obvious that anything is wrong in this reality; instead the awful truth is dripped in, little by little, and is made all the more shocking by the way that society is otherwise the same as the real world. But by the end of the novel I was left with too many unanswered questions about the details of how the underpinning concept works. For example, the clones seem to go willingly to their fate as donors, after spending a period acting as carers for those already donating. They are provided with cars and allowed to move around the country to perform their duties as carers, giving them a foretaste of their own destiny. So why wouldn’t they just run away? If they were indoctrinated against this, when and how was this achieved? That’s not all, but I’ll refrain from delving into more (as these would constitute spoilers). The premise felt frustratingly incomplete.

                This criticism may well be addressed by the author arguing that this isn’t a horror or sci-fi novel at all – it’s a coming of age story, and therefore the ins and outs of the system in which they live are incidental. This brings me to the book’s second, and most significant, strength. As a coming-of-age story it is crafted expertly, and it is particularly impressive how Ishiguro, a middle-aged man, is able to write convincingly in the first person as a young woman, and about the way teenage girls interact with each other. The manipulative, emotional bitchiness of Kathy’s best friend Ruth must be recognisable to anyone who remembers high school. Similarly Tommy is also treated cruelly by his peers, but in an inversion of what most people experience, he is great at sports but is tormented for not being ‘creative’. These interactions play out against the disquieting background of the characters discovering more about their futures, and is all the more poignant for it.

                I found the conclusion a bit of a let-down however, essentially because I always knew where the story was headed and how it would end – Ishiguro makes it evident almost from the outset that, whatever happens, things aren’t going to end well for his main characters. In the latter part of the book, there is a contrived ‘reveal’ about Hailsham and where the school fits in to the donation system, but this felt unsatisfying, in part because it was difficult to believe Kathy couldn’t have found this out through others, earlier in the story.

                I would recommend this novel for its interesting weaving together of drama, sci-fi, horror and coming-of-age elements, and for tackling troubling moral questions about ethics and medicine. Even if I can’t help the nagging feeling that Ishiguro (who was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Never Let Me Go) could have fleshed it out a little better.

                As a final side note, Never Let Me Go was made into a film in 2010, with a screenplay by Alex Garland (best known for his novel The Beach, and the screenplay for 28 Days Later). I’ve not seen it yet, but the novel reminded me, in concept at least, of the (admittedly not very good) 2005 film The Island. It’s sort of like Never Let Me Go with more car crashes and explosions, but I can recommend it over this book in one plot aspect: the clones actually try to escape their fate, rather than just blundering towards the operating table as they inexplicably do in Ishiguro’s world.

Mark Steel - Mark Steel's In Town

Published: 2011

One Man’s Tour of Modern Britain

One of the things I remember from the beery haze of university fresher’s week was the one question we all asked each other in common. The three Ws: what’s your name, what course are you doing, and where do you come from? The memorable thing about this was, when directed at one of the American oversees students, they would happily tell you about their hometown with such genuine pride and affection that you wondered why they ever left. In contrast, almost everyone from elsewhere in the UK would respond: “Yeah, I’m from (wherever). What a shithole.”

                There’s a bit of this attitude in Mark Steel’s collection of essays based around visits to a diverse range of towns and cities across the UK, but it is easily trumped by the local pride and affinity amongst the people he meets, even when that pride is directed towards a concrete hippo in a shopping centre in Walsall. It’s based on his Radio Four show of the same name, which is recorded in venues such as church halls in the town in question, with an interactive audience of locals (hearing him goad West Cumbrians about ‘jam eaters’ was particularly amusing, for example). Obviously without the audience involvement, the format of the essays is slightly different, with more time for Steel to explore and reflect on different points.

                The towns he visits are suitably diverse: from the relatively touristy (Norwich, Edinburgh) to the formerly industrial (Wigan, Gateshead) to the extremely remote (Orkney, Portland) with a bit of suburbia thrown in too (Surrey, Kent). How much I enjoyed each essay seemed to correlate with the extent to which Steel enjoyed visiting the place, even if the enjoyment is gained less from the location and more from the ennui of the locals (‘there’s nothing to do except kick the seagulls’ as one resident said of Dumfries). Elsewhere, any wit seems to be tempered by the fact that he clearly wasn’t comfortable there. In Andersonstown, the ‘troubles’ are still too close to the surface for comfort; whilst he finds Yorkshire, with its famously tactless and straight-talking inhabitants, “complex and contradictory.”

                Some places which I have lived close to and spent time in appear, such as Birmingham. “I’m not sure why Birmingham is so disliked, but it is” he begins. I could certainly identify with its impenetrably confusing road network – I’m not the only one, apparently, who has attempted to navigate my way around it and experienced the disturbing, unique to Birmingham experience of seeing the building I’m aiming for from the car, with no idea how to actually get to it from the elevated motorway. From above, Birmingham looks something like “a Scalectrix course after the dog’s sat on it”, and I’m sure he must be right. This – along with the mish-mash of half-baked planning fads that have given the city a dislocating, disjointed feel – may seem fairly self-evident. But unlike many other commentators, he also finds time to praise its sense of community and identity, which others insist don’t exist.

                At the other end of the scale, I still haven’t got any desire to actually visit the depressed former steelworks town of Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, but Steel’s take on it is more uplifting that you would imagine. Amid the derelict industries and endemic unemployment, Steel notes that the town “can’t just be a shithole, else everyone would have left.” He discovers a dominant attitude of determination to pull through bad times together, a kind of hardened jolliness, that is both affecting and uplifting.

                Despite the obvious similarities, In Town isn’t really some kind of Notes From A Small Island for the 21^st Century. This has more of an agenda about what’s wrong with – and right with – our country.  I particularly identify with the theme that unifies most of the essays: that despite corporate uniformity and the trend towards ‘clone towns’ with identikit high streets and chain pubs, these places still retain their own sense of identity, customs and quirks, almost in defiance to the onslaught of Tesco Metros and out of town shopping centres. But equally importantly, he argues, this IS a problem. Steel may be approaching this from an unashamedly left wing perspective, but you don’t have to be of this persuasion to agree that the increasing tendency of our town centres to look exactly alike is a bit depressing. After all, why would anyone (least of all the likes of Bill Bryson, or Lonely Planet et al) want to spend their time travelling around a country in which every town is almost exactly the same as the last one?