Finished: April 21, 2024
Why I read this
Recently I had thought it was a good idea to watch the movie About Time, with my fiancé thinking it would be fun to watch something bitter sweet for a change. Watching that movie again made me remember it was not bittersweet, it was absolutely heartbreaking. It’s not the normal sad of a love story or a parent losing a child, but hits you with such an unexpected sucker punch of sadness at the end that you end up sobbing through the end credits. But this is not a review of About Time. What brought me to Never Let Me Go was that it was apparently sad, the cover even said that it would be “heartbreaking”. That’s really all I knew going into it, so I decided if I wanted to explore being sad a bit more, maybe this was a good place to start.
What I learned
Before almost anything was revealed about the position of the children at Hailsham, I was already thinking that I knew this story. It immediately reminded me of something I read in middle school called The House of the Scorpion. This other book was the story of a clone of a drug lord, whose sole purpose of existence is to provide a perfect match for necessary organs for the drug lord once they are needed. The twist is that the drug lord decides to raise like a normal child instead of a lab rat, questions of ethics ensue. I’ve thought about that book a lot over the years and I still remember it pretty well considering it has been close to 15 years since I read it. Now reading Never Let Me Go, I’ve got the strange feeling of déjà vu, knowing the big questions a bit ahead of time.
Despite the familiar plot I found the read very easy, and pretty enjoyable. I liked the writing style that didn’t feel the need to explain very much, but would dive a lot into the characters thoughts. There was no superfluous data, no dates and figures the author would have to tediously check and confirm, no complex characters from far flung places that would need to be followed and massaged to fit the story line. So nothing felt forced. It seemed like a normal retelling of a story as you would find in a personal diary or a mémoire. I like to think if I were to ever write a book it would be set-up something like this.
but focusing more on the themes of the novel at hand there were a handful of ideas that really stuck out to me. First and foremost was the ethical dilemma of cloning (of course). I’ve often asked myself a similar question with meat production. Under what conditions is it ethical to eat meat? Clearly as someone who still eats meat, and at the same time has owned dogs or cats pretty much my entire life, I’ve found a way to live with the taking of a life for necessity, or even for comfort. So so the scenario goes, if we raise an animal completely in isolation, in a darkened box, where all it knows is eating and sleeping and never interacts with another creature its entire life, is it miserable? For humans we always believe that we need the bad parts of life to appreciate the good, or without a reference point we would never be able to be happy. So if we remove the good reference point from the life of an animal, is it capable of being miserable? Do we have instincts for what is good or bad innately? Do you yearn for a pasture if you’ve never been presented with the concept of the sun? I’m not sure. So taking the question to the level of humans it gets much harder simply because we relate even more with humans, but I’m not sure it’s totally different. The main characters in the book only knew they were losing something because they had been exposed to what a semi-normal life could be. They were raised in comfort and taught about art and encouraged to read (which of course would have exposed them to the realities of life and love and made them feel cheated for the life they were given and their predestined ends). This leads to two points, one being that maybe it’s more cruel to give something destined to die a reference point for good than it is to keep it in a box, maybe free range chickens or cattle suffer more in the moments of confinement before death than a lamb raised in darkness alone would feel in its lifetime. The second point being, that if exposed to life the way that they were, the clones would never have so easily accepted death. They would have faught tooth and nail to survive, to enjoy, to appreciate life like the rest of us. They would not have simply accepted that “it’s your lot to get carved up for the benefits of others”. The final question related to this is why even give these clones the ability to think? Why not infect their brains with degenerative diseases so that harvesting the organs is more like harvesting lettuce or broccoli? Why bother giving creatures the ability to think and be alive if you know you’re going to prematurely take it away? I feel like that is just asking for problems.
Moving on from a very heavy subject of ethics, I wanted to also make note of one part of the book where the students established a sort of pecking order based on how many books they’ve read. Obviously, with my recent obsession, I’d like to live in this world where reading is all that you need to do to attain status and acclaim, but alas, I do not. However I thought it was a nice point about how we as humans place such arbitrary focus on these types of things for what makes us better, more cultures, more intelligent, more fit for leadership, more successful. The students, almost completely removed from the greater human society had to create their own hierarchies, and like us they would do all sorts of things to maintain their position at the tops of these social orders. Ruth would obsessively lie and make things up to pretend that she fit in more, or better than the others just like someone might lie how they have a nicer car than they really do just to show off. It was pretty true to form, and when put so clearly it showed how ridiculous we can be with things like that, with our obsessions about fitting in and being admired.
A final point related to Ruth’s lying was that I found it strange that she was so accepted in their friendship. I’ve know people in my life that obsessively lie about everything, and I know for a fact that they are more often met with universal dislike than anything else. I’ve even known good friends to abandon someone who acts that way, so I was surprised that there appeared to be no repercussions to how Ruth approached the world. One theory I had was that they all understood that their lives were a box, that one day it would inevitably implode and their price for life would need to be paid, so anyone who could imagine things would be respected as a distraction and a leader from the gloomy truth. A bit like Michael Scott in the office throwing a party when everyone might have been fired. People flock to a leader who can make them forget what they are scared of.
What I didn’t like
Although I enjoyed the book generally I did have some pretty big flaws with it. First was that there was 0 acknowledgement of any cultures other than England. I’m sure the author did it on purpose to avoid having to explain whatever setting existed beyond this futuristic United Kingdom. But still, the kids liked to read, and they had freedom to move and watch TV, and yet none of them a single time mentions that it would be great to go and see India, or even mainland Europe. How could you read dozens of Victorian era books and not dream of seeing Paris? It was just such a plot hole that it distracted from the message. The setting felt incomplete.
A second criticism goes a bit further about Ruth and her lying. It wasn’t just he lying, but her character as a whole. She was annoying, like really annoying. Her borderline abusive personality towards her friends, and her lover, was just over the top. Either these kids were dramatically altered clones who would accept Regina from Mean Girls as their leader, or they would have absolutely kicked her to the curb long before the climax of the novel. But despite all her lying, and manipulation, and other shenanigans the other characters hardly ever showed even a bit of anger towards her. I think the plot would have been greatly strengthened by having a larger altercation between the characters along with a reduction in the overall bitchiness of Ruth.
Questions I asked
Do the characters really love each other, or as clones, are they not capable of the same type of love non-cloned humans have?
Are people naturally more tolerant of others when they are trapped in similar circumstances?
Why are we so scared of human progress? Cloning the human race and improving ourselves should be exciting like with Hyperions Ousters, yet without fail it is something to be shunned and prevented.
My Favorite Quote
“You don’t have unlimited patience and energy. So when you get a chance to choose, of course, you choose your own kind.”
Kathy H.
Books I liked like this one
Title the House of the Scorpion : Nancy Farmer (for similar questions of ethics related to cloning)
Hyperion (series) : Dan Simmons (for a look at what humanity can become)
Book Reviews for Mom 