From APBP’s wonderful graduate intern SJ Stout–
Today, the women’s book club at Hazelton totally blew my mind. This week we discussed Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian novel Never Let me Go. Whether loving it or hating it, we all delved in…debating about characters, ethics, personhood, control, and freedom. The novel left many of us perplexed, and touched. In the central premise, a group of children find themselves as “lucky pawns” in a system that (literally) preys on their bodies. That is, the children are cared for and tended to, but ultimately sacrificed and used up without their consent. We wanted to know, is it better to be handled gently but ultimately manipulated and used? Or is it better to know clearly and without illusion one’s own servitude? We can be controlled by soothing indoctrination (propaganda) or by cruel force. Katy insisted, “There has to be a third door. In this book there is no third door.” To which, someone else replied, “That’s where the sadness is.”