Unfortunately, before reading the book, I saw a couple preview clips of the movie on YouTube. This meant that I had a faint idea of what the book might be about — in a way, I wish I hadn’t seen these ‘spoilers’ and I wonder if the book’s plot would have been surprising if I hadn’t seen them. In a way, though, I feel like even if I hadn’t seen the ‘spoilers,’ I would have guessed that the donations expected of the ‘students’ at Hailsham would be organ donations. Put the word ‘donation’ together with the fact that this novel is a work of dystopian science fiction, and I would have made a reasonable guess. Like one Goodreads review said, the references actually weren’t so subtle, so the ‘twist’ was actually not very surprising or exciting.
The way that Tommy was treated and the way he would burst into “fits” of anger broke my heart, and I was glad that there was some acknowledgment at the end of the novel about how that may have been because he was the only person who knew deep down what Hailsham was all about. His rage was made fun of and viewed as irrational, when it was valid and perhaps the ‘rational’ way to react to his condition/position/fate all along. Tommy reminded me of Simon from Lord of the Flies in some ways.
Ruth and Kathy’s friendship was so toxic — reading about it gave me a similar feeling to watching a reality TV show with toxic people and relationships (like when watching My Unorthodox Life gave me a headache).
Kazuo Ishiguro said in an interview that he wanted to write a book about how love and friendship fitted into people’s lives as they realized that time is short and mortality is a fact. I’m not sure if I saw a lot of true love and friendship between the three main characters, or if the characters dealt with the question of how to live with the knowledge of our limited time. He also described the sci-fi aspect of the novel as the ‘last piece of the jigsaw’ and as a means, rather than the end, of the novel’s thematic purpose… I found it to be a pretty disturbing jigsaw puzzle piece that doesn’t really serve its purpose.
I wanted to like this book because Andrew Garfield is in the movie adaptation lol but I didn’t. I don’t like dystopian novels, science fiction, or this type of narration. I’m still glad I gave this one a read, though! I’m excited to watch the movie and see how it compares to the novel.
