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The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends,” Ser Jorah told her. “It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace.” He gave a shrug. “They never are.

“A Game of Thrones”, George R.R. Martin, 1996

Review: Never Let Me Go, 2005, Kazuo Ishiguro

What makes us human?

Is it form? The intellect? Is it the soul?

Ah, the soul.

The unquantifiable “X” we all simply assume we possess. What is a soul? What is its worth? What is its purpose?

Kazuo Ishiguro gives us all the questions without providing any of the answers, leaving us to ponder in the wake of devastating heartbreak.

Many years ago, in a retreat of sorts, we were given a bunch of cards during a particular group activity. We were asked to write things significant to us in those cards, each one of a different sort. People, possessions, and values. All these had to be those we found most valuable.

Then the story began. Apocalyptic world; everything’s gone to the dogs. The last boat out is leaving the port and there’s one seat left. Decide: leave your loved one and take the seat yourself; bribe the guards with your possessions and get seats for both you and your companion; or, throw someone off to get seats for you and your companion. 

I never hesitated.

Immediately I threw out the “values” card. I had written honesty on it. Clearly, when faced with survival, morality would be the first thing I’d throw out the window.

But this little bit of memory is barely tangential. Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go poses terrible questions. If the end was a world without cancer, would the death and destruction of sentient human clones be acceptable means?

It would be easy, too easy, to say that when that junction comes we will know what to choose. To say that when it comes to human cloning we would know better than to create farms of human beings from whom we may harvest organs for donations. To say that we would be far too upright to even consider such a heinous crime.

But the reality is that I know, clearly, that I would not hesitate. As powerful and moving as Ishiguro’s portrayal of the clones may be, there is a nagging reality that should I be given the opportunity, I would easily turn a blind eye to these human farms if it meant freedom from disease for me and my loved ones.

It’s not that the dystopian world of Ishiguro’s making is heartless. It’s that it knows quite truthfully the moral ambiguity of having human clones as organ donors and chooses not to acknowledge it. In the end, was the fact that Hailsham gave these clones their lives and their childhoods enough to assuage the guilt that lurks beneath this scientific tragedy?

Perhaps it’s the clones’ unwillingness to fight their destiny that is most heartbreaking of all. This is what they were made for. This is the goal of their lives. They may have dreams, they may have wants, but none of these are more important than serving their purpose. There is not even an attempt to escape, to fight back. 

Perhaps it is the resignation that makes them completely human. Much more human, even, facing head on the nihilistic reality of their very existence. There is no question that they have souls. 

The only question is do we?

Madame’s expression didn’t change and she kept staring into my face. “I was weeping,” she said eventually, very quietly, as though afraid the neighbours were listening, “because when I came in, I heard your music. I thought some foolish student had left the music on. But when I came into your dormitory, I saw you, by yourself, a little girl, dancing. As you say, eyes closed, far away, a look of yearning. You were dancing so very sympathetically. And the music, the song. There was something in the words. It was full of sadness.” “The song,” I said, “it was called ‘Never Let Me Go.’ ” Then I sang a couple of lines quietly under my breath for her. “Never let me go. Oh, baby, baby. Never let me go…

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005

“Back out the front of the inn I shopped for my teaching assistant.  It was an eight-harlot inn, if that’s how you measure an inn.  (I understand that now they measure inns in stars.  We are in a four-star inn right now.  I don’t know what the conversion from harlots to stars is.)”

Excerpt from LAMB: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore.

My full review here.

By the way, I got wind of this book through @presidents. You guys follow her, she has awesome taste in books.

[Note: in an effort to get through my growing stash of books, I am attempting to read at least one each week. Expect a reaction/review of sorts. I do not promise coherence.]

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

Suzanne Collins lacks a flair for brutality.

The subject of her book may be a vicious fight to the death, but her description of each combatant’s eventual demise lacks dramatic tension.  A neck snaps. Killer wasps attack. Someone dies of poisonous berries.

With every death I felt almost nothing.  Perhaps it’s a side effect of my Mortal Kombat upbringing.  Nothing less than two paragraphs of blood gushing and entrails slathered on the ground can convince me of brutality.

Quite unfortunately, I find that she also lacks the flair for demonstrating internal conflict. Even after finishing the book, I’m not entirely convinced that Katniss ever considered having feelings for Peeta. The words are there; the sentences conspire to persuade me that yes, this is a tortuous love affair in the making, but I can’t feel it.

In fact, for the most part I felt detached from the characters in the novel, like they were people I should care about but couldn’t.

And yet on two distinct parts of the novel, I found myself completely teary-eyed and on the verge of a full-blown crying session.

Because Suzanne Collins is at her best when painting a vision of silent defiance.

When the people of District 12 refuse to clap and offer a local gesture of love to honor Katniss’ sacrifice, when Katniss sings lullabies to the dying Rue and adorns her lovingly with wild flowers, when the people of District 11 send her a loaf of bread in gratitude — that’s when the characters in “The Hunger Games” become flesh and blood.

Then everything else becomes forgivable.

The occasionally clunky writing, the hard-sell of emotions, the insufficient depiction of brutality in what is supposed to be an Old Boy kind of world — it’s all forgiven.

Because suddenly I’m nodding and saying “yes, I understand you perfectly”.  Suddenly everything makes sense.  Suddenly everything means something. To me.

It’s not perfect.

I’m probably reading far too much of my personal angst into it. 

I can’t wait to read the sequel.

I park haphazardly, unable to see the white lines marking out the parking bays and not caring at all about what anyone thinks about where the bonnet of my car is in relation to the boot and buildings next to it and the five other cars that are still here. Who actually gives a shit about how precisely you’re able to put a vehicle in a white box drawn on the ground, anyway? Car parks seem to me like collective statements of sanity. I’m sane: I’m inside the lines. Me too! Me too! I am not inside the lines anymore.

Scarlett Thomas (The End of Mr. Y)