HAPPY WORLD BOOK DAY PEEPS.
Today is making me happy because Twitter and Facebook and
the streets I drive down to get to my office have all been full of small
children dressed up as their favourite character from a book and I just think
that’s kind of excellent. There’s a lot of Roald
Dahl around this year, which is excellent and I saw the cutest Mad
Hatter this morning, God. The son of a friend of mine has dressed up as Mr Rush
and he looks excellent. I’m just loving it a whole lot.
In addition to WBD, this week also seems like Ishiguro week,
don’t you think? I get that, that’s a bandwagon I am well and truly on because
I have been excited about Ishiguro’s new book The Buried
Giant (which was released on Tuesday) for the longest time.
Seriously, so excited. SO EXCITED. I also have a copy because my boyfriend is
excellent and knows that whilst the way to his heart is for defs through his
stomach, the way to mine is through books.
So, let’s Throwback this Thursday shall we? It seems obvious
this week, in light of the publication of The Buried Giant
to talk about Ishiguro, and if I’m going to talk about Ishiguro then obviously
I’m going to talk about Never Let Me Go
because that book guys and gals, that freaking book.
Never Let Me Go wasn’t the first of
Ishiguro’s that I read – that was When We Were Orphans - but
it’s absolutely my favourite. In fact, I think I’d even go so far as to say it
owns a spot on my list of Top Ten Books of All Time, I loved it that much. It’s
also been adapted into a really excellent film – although Ian would tell you
differently ‘it’s so fucking bleak Jo, what is wrong with
you?’ Which, yep, it is kind of bleak. It’s also kind of amazing. It's the best thing and it's the worst thing and just, it will make you feel all the things. It will.
I first read Never Let Me Go in
2011. It kind of blew my mind, the beauty of it, the careful execution, the use
of language, all of it, it just left me sat there once I’d finished it unable
to think anything other than ‘wow.’
I try not to use the word ‘perfect’ too often, but I kind of
feel a little bit like it wouldn’t be out of place to use it here: I can’t
think of a single thing wrong with that book, not one.
It’s so damn clever and so damn good, the charcterisation is
spot on, the story is told at just the right pace and in just the right voice,
and in the way things are held back and slowly revealed just right when kind of makes you feel like Ishiguro is playing with
you a little bit. (Such a tease that guy, I love him.) & it makes you feel,
and by ‘feel’ I mean it throws you head first in to a kind of almost
suffocating pit of despair. Yep, this
book hurts in the hurtiest of ways.
It’s kind of billed as sci-fi, which, if you’re desperate to
box it then science fiction is a label that fits I guess, but more than that
its kind of a study of human nature, of ethics and morals and the choices we
make. There’s a lot here that will make you think, that will make you look
closely at the world as it is today, that will make you study your own self and
there’s a really insightful look at love and at loss and at betrayal and
forgiveness. Also you know that old adage of ‘show don’t tell’ that I have
talked about a lot of times (I did an OU course in creative writing, it stems
from that) well, this book is a masterclass in that and it’s so subtle all of
the time, so subtle but so powerful. It’s pretty mesmerising actually and once
you start it, well you just can’t stop. There’ll be no eating, sleeping, living
your actual life for a while, so you know, be prepared for that.
I’m aware there are probably people out there that haven’t
read it, which makes me reluctant to write too spoilery a post because, for me
at least, a lot of the wonder of this book comes from the not-knowing much more
than you get from the blurb.
Part of the beauty of the whole thing comes
from Ishiguro’s slow unravelling, from the things you come to learn as you get
deeper and deeper in, that hit you like a smack to the chest and leave you
gasping. If I tell you what those things are now, then you’ll likely lose some
of that magic. Pretty much all you need to know, really, is that this book is
haunting and achingly achingly sad
and incredibly beautiful and that it will stay with you, I think, for a long
long time. And really, if you haven’t read it then you absolutely should. You should.
I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with
the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold
onto 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. That's how
it is with us. It's a shame, Kath, because we've loved each other all our
lives. But in the end, we can't stay together forever
