Never Let Me Go

[David Casseres]

So, last night I finished Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, one of the
saddest stories I've ever read.  Today has been a hiatus; tomorrow I
expect to start Against the Day.

Never Let Me Go is the perfect thing to read before starting a new
Pynchon novel, because it's the opposite of a Pynchon novel.  It's
short, it's minimalist, it centers on a small group of characters who
exist outside of history.

Its language is a pure first-person narrative by a simple character,
Kathy H., who has no tricks and who tells the story in straight
chronological order (oh wait, there's a few careful exceptions to
that), in short episodes.  At the end of each episode Kathy announces
what the next one will be about.  One after another.

Everything depends on what is withheld in the narrative, which is
driven entirely by the characters, who are in turn entirely driven by
their simple circumstance: they are clones, bred to supply organ
transplants.  They are all going to die in their twenties, they all
know it, and they have been carefully brought up in special creches to
accept this.  Only the most transgressive character, Ruth, even hopes
for the possibility of an "extension."  I found that I cared deeply
about these people, felt like I knew them.

Meanwhile, everybody else's world -- England in the 1990's -- is
exactly the same as the one we all know about.  That's not what the
story is about, it's only about Kathy and Ruth and Tommy and maybe two
or three others.



Reading this before diving into AtD is kind of like chewing the bit of
French bread and sipping the water before tasting the 30-year-old
Chateau La Tour.  Clears the palate.  But you know, it's very good
French bread and it's pure, clear water.