Tag: discoverychallenge

This was picked as part of my 2017 Discoverability Challenge. I wanted to read things I hadn’t read before, and picked ‘classics’. I’ve already managed to pick up Never Let Me Go, and I’ve got The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley on my pile as well.

Genly Ai is an ethnologist observing the people of the planet Gethen, a world perpetually in winter. The people there are androgynous, normally neuter, but they can become male or female at the peak of their sexual cycle.

They seem to Genly Ai alien, unsophisticated and confusing. But he is drawn into the complex politics of the planet and, during a long, tortuous journey across the ice with a politician who has fallen from favour and has been outcast, he loses his professional detachment and reaches a painful understanding of the true nature of Gethenians and, in a moving and memorable sequence, even finds love . .

The Left Hand of Darkness is a short book, but it’s packed full of tangles. It’s something you read once and then need to read again, both for the plot and the intertwining of the two stories and points of view, and for the language and references once you know more about the world. It’s strange and politically detailed, with a myriad of different cultures and views that are alien to us as well as to Ai, who’s there to observe. It’s also intricately laced with details about society, kemmer, the rituals and traditions, the food…and the world itself, Winter, is as alien as the people and viewpoints are. The details are wonderful: the winter doors are ten feet up because of the snowdrifts, and Ai is constantly cold in a society that exists between two glaciers.

The story is strange, told from both Ai and Estraven’s points of view, giving us a strange duality on events. I ended up seeing Ai as an alien, as the society does; Winter was strange, yes, but Ai’s observing position and knowledge of his own strangeness gave it a reserve. The plot is interesting, and intricate; I loved the ice-field and their strange, eerie journey.

Some period gender references that have not aged well; describing something as “womanish” doesn’t sit well with me, considering I have no such construct in my head – and it’s something my father says, which doesn’t endear it. But it’s a minor point – just something that stuck out to me. I also found it interesting to consider how the same book would have been written in the modern era – and it would have been very, very different. It’s a book that’s made me think about my own writing, and my own method of storytelling; not that I am likely to change immediately, but…it’s something that will help me grow, I think.

So. Odd, eerie, intricate, detailed, political and alien. Definitely a book worth reading once in a lifetime.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

In one of the most memorable novels of recent years, Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewered version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now 31, Never Let Me Go hauntingly dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School, and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life.

My overall impression of the book is fatalistic. It’s beautiful, haunted, tinged with the unquestioning acceptance of fate; sad and nostalgic while still somehow evoking an ideal childhood, a weave of friendships and memories and loves that pervades Kathy’s life even into her adulthood. But every character accepts the world as it is; there are only vague dreams of change, never a desire or a drive to actually make a difference.

The first section is placed at Halisham, a boarding school; the children have lessons, create art, compete with each other and learn and grow. They always know there’s something different about them, something odd – it’s not important, but they know their lives are set and their futures set onto a certain path, even if they don’t entirely understand what the path is. The story is tinged with the children’s inventive plots and dreams as they try to make sense of the hints they’re given. The second section is after school, when the teenagers move away to the Cottages; allowed more freedom, they talk and have sex and wait for their lives to begin. They try to find out a little more about their paths and their backgrounds, but…it’s still not important. It’s a dream, an adolescent fantasy, and by the time they step onto their paths they accept the course taken. And the final section is Kathy as an adult, a carer looking after her classmates and peers, waiting for her own turn. She travels, spending long hours thinking over the past and turning her memories into dreams.

Ishiguro’s writing style is incredibly readable; I was turning the pages almost effortlessly. The story flows very well and even though events jump back and forth, there’s no sense of confusion – everything fits and works within the overall frame. There’s some beautiful language and phrasing, and Ishiguro effortlessly evokes the idyllic nature of growing up fading into a horrifying reality.

While I love the book, when I think back over it, the fatalistic nature of the characters annoys me. None of them try to fight. None of them try to leave. They accept the boundaries and even when they try to break out, it’s still within the confines they’ve been given. I don’t know if I missed some vital part of the background that sets their place within the society they live, or if it’s just the way the characters have been set. I don’t necessarily want a Katniss-style revolt, but…some flash of something from someone would have made it a little more realistic for me.

So – beautiful, haunting, dystopian and readable. Definitely worth at least one read.

This was part of my 2017 Discoverability Challenge.