Think The Island crossed with Prep. That is how I would describe this book. Ishiguro grabs you in the first paragraph with the simple word carer. What the hell is a carer? It was this question that made me read on, and on, and on. There is strangeness throughout, along with gaps that need to be filled and questions that need to be answered. I read on because I was compelled to do so by the narrator. Kathy H. hooked me into her little world and I was powerless to put the book down. And I guess that is what we might call a good book? I suppose so. But I feel like when I cruise through a book, hell-bent on reading just to know the answers the book promises to deliver, I feel cheapened. Can you really enjoy a book you just devoured? I read like a starved person, scarfing down the words on each page as though I was not sure when my next meal of gripping fiction would come along.
This type of story, this genre crossing, is exactly the type of novel I gravitate towards. Not marketed as science fiction, this book comes as a surprise as you think you will be reading about normal things. But you have been fooled and you soon realize this as Kathy talks about the shaded nature of things at the boarding school she attends in the countryside in England. You realize at about the same time as Kathy that things are indeed rotten in the state of Denmark.
There was one thing that annoyed me at times, though, and that was the narrator's voice. Kathy tells the story of her life, and it is the blind acceptance of her fate that gets too much to handle at times. In fact, all the characters are guilty of this. Not one of them does what seems like the obvious thing to do. As a reader you can't help but have that reaction. Mine was that they needed to ask questions, they needed to demand to be told what was going on and then be able to decide what to do for themselves. But that was the beauty of Ishiguro's novel. None of the characters did this and the novel remained satirical, disturbing and utterly distressing.
Next up is Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland.
