read by Kerry Fox
Kazuo Ishiguro’s
reflection on morality and mortality makes for an unsettling listen. Set in a
post-war 1990s, this is a world that might have been, might still be or might even
be now, where human clones live out limited, regulated lives with the
understanding that their body parts will be called on some time in the future
to repair the ‘normal’ humans they replicate.
At
Hailsham, the boarding school where the protagonists meet, there is a painful emotional barrier
between the staff and students, temporarily lifted by Miss Lucy, who reveals
the destinies of all the students in the school. She is dismissed for her outspokenness.
And this coldness suffuses the book, only sometimes temporarily lifted by
doomed romance but typified by Kathy’s soulless exploration of her sexuality.
What
makes the novel so disquieting is that the principal characters, Kathy, Ruth
and Tommy seem to accept their destinies, to conform to their fates instead of
trying to escape, instead of making a loud, discomforting protest, raging
against the machine. The donors are fixed in their fates, somehow programmed to
live out their predestined lives. Their small contact with the outside world is
limited and regulated, and we learn little of the lives of the ‘normals’,
except that it is trivial and worthless.
Kerry
Fox’s deftness of touch is profound, and gives this disturbing reflection on
the modern human condition both pathos and weight.
Unforgettable.
* * * *
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