I'm reading Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go right now. I'm about halfway through it--though that's not quite the book I want to talk about right now, and yet, it's the point of this post. I'll have more to say when I finish it, which, in a perfect world, one in which I didn't have to wake up far too early tomorrow, would be tonight.
The book I want to talk about is one I must have read about ten years ago. That book was not The Remains of the Day.
Through more than half of high school I worked for a local library, shelving books. It was the perfect job for me. I liked books. (Still do.) I very much, for whatever strange, deeply rooted psychologically disturbed reason, took to shelving them. Reading titles, alphabetizing; placing books on shelves, fronting and shifting. Putting everything in order. Keeping everything neat. It was a delightful way to make money.
It was also a delightful way to come across many books I'd probably have read had I had more time. As is, I can't remember how many I actually did read, but the one that sticks out today is one I liked hardly at all: The Unconsoled. It caught my attention because it was a slightly short yet squat book; I was in that phase of loving big books. Big books mean important books, see. Big books mean good books.
Plus, this book had a fascinating premise. Fascinating at the time. It had something to do with a classical musician (or was it a conductor?) who was caught up in a strange state of amnesia; he wasn't supposed to know who he was, where he was, why he was there, outside of it dealing with the music. (If I'm wrong on this, blame time.) The book, in my hand, sturdy and solid, promised me entrance into a dream; a world of ethereal thought and surreal mental firings. The book, I knew, would be weird, and as much as I liked fat books, I also loved weird books, and to have a fat book and a weird book be, in this case, the same book...well, checking it out was pretty obvious.
And I read it. And I got angry with it. I'm not sure why, now. It didn't do very much, I think I thought. Now I think maybe it wasn't doing much I was able to pick up on, yet? The narrator (or, main character) never dealt with the fact that he had no idea who he was, that he had obvious roles to fill with no clue how to fill them--he never once got scared of his existence. I found it all less surreal than agitating. Annoying. Bad.
And yet, convinced it would get better, I forced myself to read the whole thing. It would be a long time before I'd hit the point when I'd feel like it was safe to give up on a book if I wasn't enjoying it halfway through. I remember sitting at my kitchen table, pushing myself from page to page, convinced if I just kept going, this character would snap to attention, notice he's living in a dream, and freak out. I was waiting, searching, yearning for the freak out. The only freak out to come was my own. I finished the book. I regretted having read it. And, a little bit later, I moved off to college and underwent the transformative freak-out period that awaited me there. (Grew my hair out, gave up on my ambitions of becoming a highly-paid engineer. The usual.)
Several years, some inferior jobs, and a couple haircuts later, I found myself sick to death of the Internet--my long-time constant companion--and all the crap on it and started wondering if maybe there were people using it for things I was interested in. Like, reading books. And writing stories. Sure enough, about two seconds worth of Googling later, I'd been introduced to the lovely and exciting world of the "lit blog".
Oddly enough, one of the first things I found there was a link to a Kazuo Ishiguro interview or article. Seemed he had a new book coming out. I couldn't hold my old grudge against him--I mean, it wasn't his fault his book fell into the hands of some idiot kid who was looking for something in a book of his he'd never set out to do. And yet, a little reading on my part later, finding out that there were other people who saw The Unconsoled as a sort of low-point (or at least as a faltering step) in his oeuvre was...well, consoling is probably too easy a word, but there you have it. Besides, he did write The Remains of the Day, which was, it seemed, a very important book. And he had this new book coming out, apparently. But mostly me reading about where he was, who he was, what he wrote, it felt a little bit like checking in on an old friend. One you were never close to, but you did have that bonding experience once, a long time ago. So what if it involved cussing and eyestrain.
It took me reading a few more reviews of his new novel, Never Let Me Go, for a few things to set in. One--this promised to be a very strange book. Two--this was a book that, despite the old times, I had to read.
So now here I am, feeling like I've re-lived the last nine years in miniature. I forced myself through a book I didn't much care for (A Changed Man--though I don't think I'd have described my experience with The Unconsoled, at the time, so tamely as one "I didn't much care for"). I dropped the next book I picked up about halfway through because my eyes kept drifting off the page and finding more interesting things to look at in the carpet. My hair's probably grown a little bit in that time. My car almost exploded, and that made me kind of freak out for a few days. Then everything turned out fine. And now I sit, ten years/a few weeks later, and I'm back where I started.
Except, not quite.
This time, I'm loving every word of this book.
And that's where I'll cut myself off until I finish the book--laws of averages and bodies in motion staying in motion not withstanding, the whole thing could go to hell before the time's up. I don't feel it's going to though. But I'll stop here before I have to start knocking on wood with every sentence.
All that said, and if you've stuck with me this far, I've got a warning to offer up. Never Let Me Go hinges on a twist. Though not so much a twist as a slowly revealed fact. You could sum up the fact of this book in one sentence. To reduce this book to that sentence is to rob it of its ... I don't want to reduce this book.
So I'll offer up this word of advice. If, you, patient TD&OC reader, are somehow turned on to this book by this post and my (hopefully soon to come) follow-up alone--if, say, you haven't read any reviews of the book yet, and you think you might like to pick the book up, give it a shot, see what my buzz is about--then, please, don't read any reviews. Because the reviews are happy to spoil the fact of the book for you. And while my enjoyment of the book hasn't been reduced by that foreknowledge, as far as I can tell, I can only guess what certain facts of the book would do to a reader who doesn't see them coming. I suspect there would be surprise, and shock, and sadness, and confusion; I suspect in the end, you who reads the book and likes it, and me who reads the book and likes it, we'll still end up at about the same place. But there's something to not knowing where the journey will take you that, well, that's not something I'm ready to take from you.
Spoiling the book a little bit was necessary for me to take an interest in it; if, all things holding up for the last half of course, I can spark your interest in it without spoiling the book a bit, I'd be a happy book pusher.
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