[darryl]

Originally Posted by gmw

I think the medical situation is merely a prop in the story, I don't think the story itself is intended to be about cloning.

I totally agree. This is science fiction of the type that uses the science to create a world so as to explore other issues. It is not about the science, which in this case is deliberately vague perhaps because it is so implausible. This is actually much easier to accept in this type of story because the science is simply incidental. In so far as the book can be said to be about one thing it is I think the human need to rationalise our more appalling actions by dehumanising those subject to them. This passage from The Silence of the Lambs comes to mind:

“Nothing I wouldn't try if he had one of mine. Why did she keep saying 'Catherine,' why the name all the time?”
“She's trying to make Buffalo Bill see Catherine as a person. They're thinking he'll have to depersonalize her, he'll have to see her as an object before he can tear her up. Serial murderers talk about that in prison interviews, some of them. They say it's like working on a doll.”

Originally Posted by gmw

I didn't see it quite like this. For me there was no "big reveal". What explanation was offered by Madame and Miss Emily near the end was almost the worst part of the book - we didn't need it.

We don't agree on this but certainly your experience is equally as valid as mine. Personally I did need that explanation, although minimal. It is only in that conversation that we learn why the school existed and what the donations were in fact for. Only in that conversation do we see the full horror of the situation. For me, the book would not have been complete without it. Indeed, without this explanation I would have found it so unsatisfactory that I would have struggled to give it even a single star.