Wednesday, March 05, 2008

"Never Let Me Go"

Lisa Schiffren writes a brief overview of the distopia, Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro (a Japan-born British novelist perhaps best known for the novel, The Remains of the Day, which later became a film starring Anthony Hopkins).

I confess I'd never heard of the book, which deals with cloning.

Schiffren calls it "a profoundly disturbing, ultimately pro-life novel, by a mainstream, extremely gifted literary novelist. Apart from recommending it in general, I think it would be an excellent addition to the list of books that American high school students are required to read. It makes a far more relevant point than many of the books in the current English curricula."

According to the Wikipedia page for the book, "Time Magazine named it the best fiction novel of 2005 and included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.[1]"

Anyone else out there read it?

Update: Here is Chuck Colson on the book:

"I recommend this book for adults and older teens (there's some material here that is not suitable for younger children), and I encourage you to share it with people who don't fully understand the cloning issue. Never Let Me Go is a powerful work of art that, by impacting the imagination, reaches us at the deepest level, which is often more powerful than the best scientific and political arguments."

Read the whole thing.

HT: Keith Plummer