Never Let Me Go

Everywhere I look, there seems to be a review of the book that I currently reading: Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.

Essentially, what Ishiguro has done in this book (and in recent novels) is subvert the stereotypes of a given literary genre and thus reinvigorated it and expanded it. Never Let Me Go, with its theme of bioethics and genetic engineering within an alternative, although not too different, reality, is a version of a science fiction novel, without many of the genres traditional tropes. Similarly, When We Were Orphans is a skewed version of the classic detective story, The Remains of the Day is a manor house drama from a different angle, &c. Margaret Atwood in her review of Never Let Me Go for Slate makes a similar observation:

Ishiguro likes to experiment with literary hybrids, to hijack popular forms for his own ends, and to set his novels against tenebrous historical backdrops; thus When We Were Orphans mixes the Boys' Own Adventure with the '30s detective story while taking a whole new slice out of World War II. An Ishiguro novel is never about what it pretends to pretend to be about, and Never Let Me Go is true to form. You might think of it as the Enid Blyton schoolgirl story crossed with Blade Runner, and perhaps also with John Wyndham's shunned-children classic, The Chrysalids: The children in it, like those in Never Let Me Go, give other people the creeps.

Ishiguro's book has been receiving a lot of good press, and he is popping up in dozens of periodicals giving interviews. However I am particularly annoyed with The Atlantic's recent policy of making almost all their content subsciber-only. This includes the web-only features, which this month includes what I gather to be a long and interesting interview with Ishiguro. The Rake's Progress has kindly reproduced some of the interview, but, really, I would like to read the whole thing. I buy The Atlantic every month, although I am not a subscriber. I am a loyal and keen follower of the magazine, so I am pissed that they now want only subscribers to come to their site. I understand the logic of not printing entire articles online because it takes away the need to buy or subscribe, but online only content is different. I guess the internet has made me used to getting something for nothing.