"Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro
I believe the bookies in the UK have it as the front runner for the Booker. It's a dystopia about cloning but while the ethics are an issue the real heart of the novel is characterization and how people would act and relate to each other. Just like "Remains of the Day" could be said to be about social class and it was; but characterization and relationships were key there as well.
It's quite brilliant the way he builds the suspense about what's really going on and just like the students at Hailsham we somehow know more before we really know it. While it it somewhat difficult to believe our society would ever raise clones for the sole purpose of harvesting their organs, it is certainly true that we need to think very carefully about what we begin as once we have cures for cancer, heart disease, etc. we will certainly never let go of those cures. This is a major premise of the novel.
Hailsham (I guess it's a play on "hail a sham") was an experimental cloning centre where the students were encouraged to be creative and who were protected from the truth of their purpose so they could have a "happy" childhood. They believed to the end this helped them to cope with the reality of their future. Art work from the students was collected to try to prove the clones had "souls". In the end this experiment was abandoned and all clones now up knowing their purpose and being suffciently branwashed to accept their purpose in life which is to "donate" and to eventually "complete" (die).
The novel is very moving and poignant in depicting the Hailsham students who hear rumours that they are "special" and can be given extensions before beginning donations if they prove they are in love or rumours that they could actually work in a normal workplace for a while. These all turn out to be rumours without any truth and it is quite heartbreaking.
As absurd as the premise of the novel seems, I can't help thinking that the advantaged of this world provide similar heartbreaking scenarios for the disadvantaged continually and yet we don't recognize the absurdity of this situation.
"Rockbound" by Frank Parker Day
This was originally published in 1928 and is about the fishing communities on Nova Scotia's South Shore. It's been recently republished and I see it's won the CBC Radio Canada Reads contest. Really quite interesting and especially since the author was almost murdered by the inhabitants of this area when he went back to visit because the book portrayed "us humble inhabitants on four little island as ignorant, immoral, and superstitious...when our Island can boast of three school teachers, and there isn't a child that can't read and write".
Each chapter starts with a quote from the Canterbury Tales. This quote from the novel gives a flavour of it and also seems rather fitting after reading about a colleague of Jim's who is currently on a year's sailing trip, and appears to be spending most of the time in the fog off the California coast. Sounds like the fog there is coming in like Godzilla rather than the "little cat feet" of Carl Sandburg.
"David took a course on Rockbound before the fog shut out the island, and kept his ears alert for the sound of breakers. The deep-laden Phoebe moved sullenly, her jib flirting from side to side of the stay with a vixenish snap. Now, had David had a draught of rum, or even pipe and tobacco, he would have been comforted, for the stoutest heart is lonely on a fog-shrouded sea."
