A reason to cheer amidst pall of gloom
I think I recently read the most depressing book in the world, and it was all the cover’s fault. The cover showed two young people, from the back, racing towards a pier or something, looking like they were in search of something. “Based on a major motion picture!” it screamed, “Starring Keira Knightley!” Now, I don’t know about you, but the Kiera Knightley I’ve seen has been happy, mushy stuff, so you can imagine how I made this assumption.
Never Let Me Go is the second Kazuo Ishiguro book I’ve read, the first being his recent collection of short stories called Nocturnes. Not that Nocturnes was cheerful, but it wasn’t uncheerful either. It was the way a lot of short story collections are — good short story collections, i.e. — poignant and full of vivid characters. Never Let Me Go is about the same, but incredibly, heart-breakingly wretched.
It starts off happily enough in an alternative, modern day Britain, where a young woman is narrating about her life in what seems to be a boarding school or an institution of sorts, where she had a group of close girlfriends, a guy friend she got to know well, and teachers or “guardians” that she liked. There are some mysteries, but you figure it’s just the stuff that all kids have, little mysteries in their lives. I’m not going to spoil the book for you so I won’t reveal the big deal about the mysteries, but safe to say, even a hardened reader like me had to reread the sentence a couple of times in order for it to sink in.
It was nominated for a Booker and named the best book of 2005 by Time magazine, as well as being included in Time’s 100 Best Novels list. Why should you read it? Well, because it’s brilliant writing, which I think is a good enough reason to read anything, really, even a cereal box. It made me look up the word “dystopian” which the Wikipedia articles keep linking to, and which is a word I’ve read before, but have never really known the precise meaning of — any book that makes you want to research its genre, is also a good book. (Look up the term yourself, it makes for an interesting read.) Its main character is a young woman, always a plus point for me. And finally, even if it is depressing, it’s thought-provoking, and that’s always nice, isn’t it?
Now, on to the film, armed with several hankies.
The columnist is an author
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