I read this many years ago. At the time, the revelations burst upon me one by one and, having wept near the ending, I considered this a hugely powerful piece of fiction which was nominated for the 2005 Booker Prize, and, almost alone, justifies Ishiguro's 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Now, re-reading it, I'm not so sure. Knowing the plot from the start, it had less power to surprise me. But what I can appreciate is his development of character. There are three main characters who grow up together in a sort of boarding-school. Kath, the narrator, is extraordinarily perceptive about the emotions and motivations of the people she observes. Tommy is a lonely little boy: he's often bullied and he has tantrums. Ruth's powerful imagination, her determination, and her sometimes bitchy behaviour make her a natural leader. Together with the other members of their peer group, they go through all the pangs of growing up, the shifts of loyalty, the squabbles and the reconciliations.
It's hugely normal and everyday and this creates huge verisimilitude so that the reader starts becoming aware of what makes these kids different at the same time as they do. Ishiguro adds the oddness in and raises the temperature in tiny increments, so that it becomes natural to talk of donations and carers, of possibles and completion and Madame's Gallery even before you really know what they mean, which is just the way a child would learn.
By the time you realise why these children will never have the opportunities taken for granted in the world at large, you are fully invested in them. You follow the roller coaster, the ups of hope and the downs of despair.
The plot is, of course, important. But it is the skill with which Ishiguro has shown the reader the world through the eyes of Kath, so that the reader empathises and becomes one with Kath, that makes him worthy of the Nobel. He does the same thing in Klara and the Sun, a later book narrated by an android.
Towards the end there is a long intense speech which sets out the moral options and explains why the dystopian future world the Ishiguro has created is as it is.
But mostly the prose wanders back and forth as Kath narrates her story. For example: "Anyway, to get back to my point, when this sort of talk was going on, it was often Ruth who took it further than anyone." Mostly the narrative is straight-forward but every so often there are phrases like "anyway, to get back to my point ..." that ramp up the feeling that this is naturalistic dialogue. It also deflects attention away from the fact that Kath is both incredibly observant and has an extraordinary memory, repeating conversations, even from childhood, verbatim; the occasional admission that she isn't sure about something makes the reader feel that the rest must be true. This subtly used technique ramps up the verisimilitude without getting in the way of the flow of the story.
And then, again, I wept. Because, in the end, the insoluble problem faced by each of these children, is the one faced by all of us: what's the point in art or anything, or love, when in the end we will die and we will be forgotten.
Some authorities classify it as a Bildungsroman and I would concur.
This book prompted an interesting reading group discussion. Most of us, like myself, were reading the book for the second time and felt this gave us a different appreciation of it; in particular we could admire the author's artistry in the way he delicately dropped in foreshadowings. It was felt that Kath was an unreliable but not dishonest narrator: she has a very good memory for things but she often admits that her recollections do not necessarily conform to those of others. We realised that Kath's superpower (noticing and being able to understand the nuances of human behaviour) was a useful narrative device.
One of our members suggested that the book belonged to the Gothic genre. She cited the settings: the boarding school as a sort of ruined castle set in its unkempt grounds, the removal to the Cottages (a metaphor for the barns in which farm animals are kept) which are cold and set in a barren landscape, the empty roads along which the mature and isolated Kath drives.
Perhaps Tommy, who has tantrums, is modelled after the conflicted hero of Gothic literature, the young Heathcliff. Is 'Kath' a reference to Cathy of Wuthering Heights? Is she the damsel in distress? Perhaps she is more like the heroine of Jane Eyre, who reunites with her love only after he has been crippled.
There are spoilers in the following paragraph
Or, rather than considering the Brontes, is this a version of Frankenstein? The kids are not normal human beings, looked on with dread by Madame even though she is one of their protectors and advocates; the kids are the monsters. Frankenstein, their creator, never appears, but the moral issues are very similar: even when the guardians do their best to protect to protect them, still they are human cattle exploited for the benefit of society. They leave Hailsham in the same way that Adam and Eve are expelled from Eden, to wander the earth. The difference is that the kids don't rebel against their creators (though I and all the book group were ardently wishing Kath would just run away!). The monster's angry rebuke to his creator, his God - "Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature ... Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends” - does not hold in this version of the myth.
Selected quotes:
- "It's almost like entering a hall of mirrors. Of course, you don't exactly see yourself reflected back loads of times, but you almost think you do." (Ch 2) Nice foreshadowing
- "We certainly knew - though not in any deep sense - that we were different from our guardians, and also from the normal people outside." (Ch 6)
- "We're modelled from trash. Junkies, prostitutes, winos, tramps. Convicts, maybe, just so long as they aren't psychos. That's what we come from." (Ch 14)
- "She told Roy that things like pictures, poetry, all that kind of stuff, she said they revealed what you were like inside. She said they revealed your soul." (Ch 15)
- "Right from that first time, there was something in Tommy's manner that was tinged with sadness, that seemed to say: 'Yes, we're doing this now and I'm glad we're doing it now. But what a pity we left it so late'." (Ch 20)
- "However uncomfortable people were about your existence, their overwhelming concern was that their own children, their spouses, their parents, their friends, did not die from cancer, motor neurone disease, heart disease." (Ch 22)
- "I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold on to each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart." (Ch 23)
Also by this author and reviewed in this blog:
- Klara and the Sun: Klara is an android and this is her interior monologue as she tries to make sense of the human world.
- The Buried Giant: Ishiguro's version of fantasy? An old man and his wife leave their mediaeval village to embark upon a quest.
- When We Were Orphans: Celebrated private detective, Christopher Banks, returns to Shanghai to solve the mystery of the disappearance of his parents.
- The Unconsoled: a Kafkaesque masterpiece
