Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

Hare and Hounds, Lansdown, Bath - October 12th 2011

Overall, the book seemed to get an enthusiastic reception, although as Mark Th pointed out early on, it is easy to see how it could divide opinion and we all had a sympathy therefore for Ras' disparaging remarks. In fact Ras' notes revealed some telling comments when he wrote "Alternatively....it is not about clones at all, but about society as a whole" and drew a possible comparison with the clones in the book and soldiers in the trenches of WW1 fighting without necessarily understanding why, but went on to conclude that he didn't think that was the aim of the book and therefore it failed for him (the rest of us thought he might be on to something until then...). In many ways this summed up what many others liked about the book in that it continually raised questions in the reader about what the book was really about, what was really going on, what significance did certain events really have etc.

Positives about the book included: The way it gave glimpses without revealing all; successful portrayal of a female protagonist by a male author; insight into the dynamics of power and what suppresses people and prevents them from fighting back; analysis of relationships in constrained situations; poetic and straightforward language that belied the complex undercurrents; ability of the book to chill and frighten with sinister insinuations; building a certain sense of suspense, which while some felt was false due to revelations made one third and halfway through the book, Chris B suggested must have existed as he had felt this strongly on his first read but the feeling wasn't there on the second read when he knew the outcome.

Negatives depended very much on your standpoint. Some really didn't care for the whole episode with Madame and Miss Emily (Mark T and Mark Th) while others liked this phase of the book (Rob). Some were frustrated by the refusal of the author to explain better what was going on (Ras and Mark T) while others liked the sense that Ishiguro was very deliberate about not giving much away and therefore provoked much parallel thinking by the reader (Neil). On a personal note I shall continue to wonder what was so enthralling about finding and seeing a grounded boat for some weeks to come and I think this is very clever.

Other questions people will be left searching fruitlessly for answers to include: why didn't these randy clones have sex with "normal" people - or why didn't "normal" people exploit the opportunity to have "risk-free" sex with clones (Chris W), why were all the roads so featureless (Steve), what makes someone a human being rather than a scientific creation (Rob), why was Kathy always a carer (Mark T) and why is Ishiguro still allowed to write books (Ras).

What is curious about the book is that while there was some consensus on the evening about people having enjoyed the book and found it to be a good book (Richard revealed that he had put off reading the last 50 pages to try and savour the ending), there was a quite a diverse range of feelings about what in particular people had enjoyed about it or been impressed with. While for some it was more about the writing style, for others it was the analysis of power and its ability to marginalise people and for others it was as much about what the book didn't say as about what it did.

Consistently high marking with one exception, averaging 7.23

Nocturnes – Kazuo Ishiguro

29th July 2010

A small, but perfectly formed group of only four of us (Steve, Neil, Richard and Rob) met at the Fox and Badger to discuss Nocturnes. 'Twas a consensus that the book was a let down - though Steve was more positive about it than others and none of those present took Ras's extreme stance in his notes that "Writers of books this pointless should be fined for the waste of resources and damage to the environment arising from its publication".

Much of the discussion was about the fact that none of the stories actually went anywhere. Several of them (particularly it was felt the first and last) began to engage in an interesting story, with characterisation that was good good in places (Steve), or OK (others present) but then the story seemed to then fizzle out with no satisfactory ending. This begged the question about what makes a good short story - where there was essentially a difference of opinion between Steve and the rest of us. The majority view was that the real skill in writing a short story is the ability to still have a beginning, a middle and an end, with a point to what has been written and the whole thing feeling like it had been a conventional novel but told in an impressively concise number of pages. This 'wholeness' though was not essential to Steve, who felt that the way some of the stories were written with the drifting off at the end brought an 'ephemeral' quality and was fine. This led into ananolgy with music - fade outs at the end of tracks are OK and a useful and sometimes positive device (quoth Steve) - yes (replied Richard and Rob) - but if the whole album consists of every song ending in a fade-out (as Nocturnes did) then it becomes tiresome and you begin to conclude that the composer (or author) didn't know how to bring anything to a clear end.

The other three areas of discussion about the book that come to mind were:

The actual or alleged connections between the five stories. Neil and Rob had completely missed the fact that the Lindy who appeared all bandaged up eating salmonella infested chicken (see below) was the same Lindy on the balcony in story one. There was even a suggestion from Richard and Steve that there might be links somehow, somewhere, between all the stories, but when challenged to verify this by the unperceptive Neil and me that claim fell short of hard evidence (some tenuous suggestion of the cousin of the strumming mountain walker being the third cousin twice removed of the put upon friend who smashes up his friends apartments - but we wouldn't buy into that).

The quality of the writing - where there was a broadly similar difference between us taking place. Steve felt it was generally good writing, whilst Rob in particular thought it 'clunky', using sentences that didn't flow well. This led into an (unresolved) discussion about the definition of good writing styles

Believability of the storyline. We had this discussion the previous month over 'Shadow of the Wind' where there was broad agreement that if the story didn't set out to be 'realism' then it was fine for elements of the storyline to stretch the boundaries of credulity (or is it credibility???). However, several times in Nocturnes - which by common consent did seek to set itself as realism - things happened that were not credible. In particular for Richard and me when a hotel left chicken out overnight for a buffet and then Security didn't think that two people with bandages around their faces might be the 'thieves' they were looking for.

Beyond that we drifted into discussions about a rnage of things varying from the extent to which we do or do not know about the secret lives of people we think we know well (was Richard trying to tell us something?), to the challenges being faced by all of us in our work arising from the current economic climate and government cuts (bar recently retired psychology professors with secret lives). But let's not go down that depressing road again. We just managed to afford the bar bill between us.

5.53