Based on recommendations and descriptions, I placed four novels that I had not previously read on the list of options for my Grade 12 University level students’ upcoming multi-genre assignment. Then I promptly began reading them in order to be well informed before my students give their presentations and submit their papers.
Never Let Me Go
(If you hope to read the book yourself, you may want to skip my summary of its contents here, as part of the magic of the story is discovering just what is going on with the odd setting and characters.)
The main characters of the novel, Kathy H. and her friends Ruth & Tommy, are clones who have been created for the purposes of organ donations. They were raised and educated at Hailsham, a school that focused on art and literature. Ishigiro, however, only very slowly makes this apparent as the novel unfolds. While this makes the first few chapters a little confusing, it is very intriguing. The reader only discovers that Hailsham students will never have children on page 66, that they were created to donate vital organs on page 73, and that they are indeed clones on page 127. Ishigiro is a master.
The first great question that this book raised for me was whether or not it is fair for these Hailsham students to spend their lives this way, while being reminded that there are many people in the world living in awful circumstances without any hope. Not to mention the fact that Hailsham students did at least get to receive a quality education!
The other great question that Never Let Me Go raised was: how can one prove that s/he has got a soul? I liked the fact that the school administrators collected students’ artwork and poetry in an effort to prove to the outside world that while they were clones, the students did indeed have souls.
The title of the book came from a song that Kathy repeatedly listened to — Track #3 on Judy Bridgewater’s album Songs After Dark (1956). Though Kathy imagines that the song is about a woman becoming a mother, Madame saw it as “a new world coming rapidly … more scientific, efficient … more cures … but a harsh, cruel world.” (249) Seeing Kathy dance to it, she pictured “a little girl … holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.” (249)
And, of course, the title represents the relationship between the main characters, clinging to each other and to the memories they’ve shared. At the end of the novel, Tommy tells Kathy:
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 I think 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.” (258)
I’d like to remind Tommy that he and Kathy and Ruth seemed to push each other away every bit as often as they may have tried to cling to each other. Perhaps that is just the way it can sometimes be with good friends. But with love?
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Image by FreeWine
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I gave my list of 
and Shakespeare’s 
, 
by Charlotte Brontë was their next selection. This novel is an option for our school’s Grade 11 (University) course, and it’s a good fit for that, providing lots of opportunity for analysis.
Oh well. Perhaps I’m simply still disappointed that André Alexis’ Asylum, surely the greatest book published in Canada this year, was overlooked by the prizes. In that case, perhaps I ought to start my own annual literary prize for fiction. …
, by local favourite Timothy Findley. First published in 1995, it remains an excellent novel for a Grade 12 University class; it is as full of symbolism, historical relevance, and literary allusion as Canadian Literature can get. 
There have been a few books over the years that have cast a dark shadow over my days of experiencing them, from the moment the book is started until that when the final page is completed and catharsis can be sought near the bottom of a Cafe Americano. Experiences like Shakespeare’s