Page Forty-Three

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

In this post-apocalyptic novel, a man and his young son are traveling across burned America in order to find the coast. What they will find there is uncertain. Their priority is to keep alive amid starvation, the "bad guys," cannibalism, freezing temperatures, sickness, waning hope and faith, and the temptation of suicide, symbolized by the ever-present pistol the man carries. Everything is reduced to its most basic form, including the dialogue between the two and the stylistic elements the author uses. Page after page they travel the road, with only eachother and the love they have for one another, and the "fire" they carry. The reader is kept interested by waiting to see if perhaps some Godly intervention will occur when they are finally able to get to the coast, but the anti-climactic event simply reinforces the wasteland that surrounds them.

At times touching, particularly the boy whose concern for goodness is heartwrenching, at other times harrowing, with its description of what people have been reduced to, the book overall was a typical dystopian novel: depressing. However, it does leave readers with a glimmer of hope in the form of the boy who must carry on, carry the fire, and fight to find a reason to continue amid a bleak and destroyed world.

Page Forty-Two

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Another book where I saw the movie first. While I think that was definately a mistake, it did help make sense of the book for me. However, I kept comparing it to the movie, which I loved, and felt I could have appreciated the book more had I not seen the film first.

The concept is very intriguing. A number of children are growing up at Hailsham, a seeming boarding-school in England. The children are told yet not told, know yet don't know, what their purpose in life is: to become donors until eventually they "complete." Cut off from society, fed half-truths, and raised to eliminate death in the world, none of these children fully understand how their lives have been one big lie.

Kathy H. narrates the story and looks back on her life at Hailsham, her complex relationship with friends and schoolmates Ruth and Tommy, and brings us into her current life of being a carer. She and Tommy eventually find the romance that had been hinted at throughout the novel, even during Tommy and Ruth's lengthy relationship, but realize their quest for a "deferral" in order to live as 'normal' human beings for a few years before returning as donors, is ultimately futile. Upon finding Miss Emily, the headmistress at Hailsham, she informs them deferrals do no exist and to think of themselves lucky to have been raised at Hailsham -many other 'institutions' of its kind were not as humane. Kathy H. has spent the whole book revealing the humanity and emotions of herself and others who grew up at Hailsham, and at the end we realize society has rejected this group of people and simply uses them as a means to an end.

A very engaging read, and an excellent and emotional film version.