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Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl
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This discussion has been great. It has helped me understand and appreciate the book more. I think I would have a completely different experience to read this book a second time. The first read-through there are so many concealed details that get revealed slowly that you are in a questioning mindset which makes its more difficult to passively accept the science and alternate world. The second time I would focus more on the people and emotions and interactions between characters.
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It was my second reading of the book and I did enjoy it, though not as much as I did the first time. But it did let me concentrate on the simplicity of Kathy's narration, and to consider who she thinks her audience is.
Clearly from the bits I quoted earlier, it is her fellow clones, so she doesn't need to explain the general ways in which the system works. In any case, she has only a limited understanding of that herself.
Her style is artless and in many ways she seems a lot younger than 30 or so. (She has been a carer for 12 years, which would make her about that age.) Again, I accept that that is a reflection of her limited education and interaction with anyone other than her fellow clones.
I didn't mind the "information dump" from Miss Emily at the end. This was something of which Kathy and Tommy had no knowledge, and so they and we could only understand what was going on by getting that information from someone who knew how the system worked.
And finally in writing this, I reflected on their names. Kathy is used for adults as well as children, but adult males aren't usually still called a more childish name like Tommy. It underlined again the clones' more childlike qualities.