Quote:
Originally Posted by Dazrin
Basically, the society as presented, even in the limited view, is not believable. In any way.
|
My own thought was why go through the cycles of donations? Not only is that far more expensive, a clone who dies early in the donation cycle is a loss. Why not harvest everything at one fell swoop? Although I'll grant that the most chilling aspect of the book to me was the suggestion of the post-completion existence, where presumably the clones were kept in a state of suspended animation (but not a mindless one) while everything was put to good use. But yeah, the economics of it strained my credulity too, and too much, so then the question became how well it worked as a fable.
Not very well, for me. I thought the framework was too slight for the weighty issues it purports to raise. It was lazy. If the author has nothing to say and no vision to impart, then the reader has to do too much of the work. This didn't grab me sufficiently to make it worth my while.
Really, all this was a variation on a love triangle and I found it hard to care. Most especially since it seemed one characteristic of the clones was a persistent emotional immaturity. There was their incredible and universal passivity (with one or two possible exceptions*) in the face of certain death, but it was more than that. The belief that somehow falling in twue wuv would gain them a reprieve? Maybe at 12. But they never grew out of it!
*Another instance where Ishiguro threw out something more a little more interesting in a very pedestrian account, the girl who left and returned as a ghost? Was she the lone rebel and thus anathematized? And the myth of the handless and footless boy, well, that was the incarnation of what was in store and further evidence that the clones knew on some level.
All that talk about souls. :yawn: I think Ishiguro watched too much
Buffy at the turn of the century. It was lame as metonymy for humanity.