I am currently experiencing minor flooding (the bridge in and out of my neighborhood has been washed out by a cresting creek), so I am a bit late to discussing my own nomination.
I see that many a strong feeling has been elicited, and that is all I can hope for in a book club selection. A few comments that, hopefully, I can expand on later:
First, the book got a lot of attention in the medical realm when it was published, so clearly, bioethicists don't find the question concluded as some of you do. In fact, in a review in the Nursing Standard nursing journal, the editor stated that she "fretted about these children long after [she] had finished reading." (Gray, Jean.
Nursing Standard (through 2013); London Vol. 20, Iss. 14-16, (Dec 14, 2005-Jan 3, 2006): 29.)
There is also a great discussion of the novel as abolitionist literature rather than dystopia in the
Human Rights Quarterly. I quote some of it here:
Quote:
In the early nineteenth century, abolitionist writers, frustrated with efforts to reason with undecided and pro-slavery adversaries, appealed instead to their emotional sensibilities. This approach turned away from the public sphere of debate, rhetoric, and political activism for what was believed to be the universal realm of sentiment. There is a similar, calculated use of feeling at work in [Never Let Me Go].
Feeling weighs heavily in the construction of Kathy H’s memoir, and the emotional connections between characters and between Kathy H and the reader figure preeminently in the novel’s notion of what it means to be human. Therefore, the more critically productive approach to would be to consider the work as a hybrid of sentimental and abolitionist literatures.
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Shaddox, Karl.
Human Rights Quarterly; Baltimore Vol. 35, Iss. 2, (May 2013): 448-469,536
I know that for most of us, the question of cloning of this kind is long-since decided. But viewing it as a narrative of modern day slavery gives it a different flavor. Clearly this is taken to an extreme, but the people who will be donors are also forced to provide for the post-operative care and mental well-being of those already undergoing donations.
A few of you have termed this "alternative history" and I think that goes hand in hand with bfisher's comment below. We know nothing about this cloning program except that it started just after the war. We assume that this is WWII. Is it not just possible that more of the Nazi science bled out into the wider world in this version of post-war Europe? We never see mention of any other countries or wars after that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bfisher
The use of "complete" as an intransitive verb was brilliant; in the sense of the Nazi's usage of "Final Solution" as an extreme euphemism - a hint of the larger society that we never see in the novel.
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I will try to respond to more later, but I'm back to flood watch now.