50 Book Challenge Part Five

Surely the point of Kathy et all in Never Let Me Go (sorry, catching up on the thread above) is that they are not merely super-institutionalised children, they are clones? They're almost like normal human children, but not quite, there's something missing. They don't feel, or react, or behave quite as a human being would in that situation, hence why the book is so uncanny.

Hi all and thank you Southeast for the new thread. I'm just back from holiday so haven't read the updates yet.

Here's my holiday reading:

22. The Various Haunts of Men, Susan Hill
Inspired by whoever posted about these on the last thread :) I like police procedurals and books about difficult men who live in beautiful houses, but dislike books about people being murdered, so this was a love-hate for me :)

23. We were Liars, E Lockhart
Enjoyed this - YA book about a very privileged but troubled teenage girl recovering from a head injury. I like unreliable narrators - maybe avoid this if you don't :)

24. So You've Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson
I haven't read any Jon Ronson before so can't comment on this as intelligently as someone who has read his other books. Thought this was a timely, if sometimes sloppy, examination of Twitter witchhunts and how they fit into our historical and social concepts of shaming. An entertaining read.

25. Don't Stop Me Now, Vassos Alexander
This is Vassos-from-radio-5-and-Chris-Evans' book about running. As a runner, I enjoyed his stories of the places he's run, and the experiments he's done with different training methods, but found it all a bit narcissistic as the book went on. Sorry, Vassos, you are not that fascinating.

26. Us, David Nicholls
I enjoyed this. It's the gentle story of a middle-aged man whose relationships with his wife and teenage son are breaking down. They attempt one last holiday together, with somewhat predictable but nonetheless readable results. Loved the characterisation of the father and son, though found the women characters rather lacking (I can't remember enough about One Day to say whether the same applied there - anyone?).

27. The Nightingale, Kristin Hannah
Story of two sisters living in occupied France during WW2. I've read a couple of her earlier novels which were rather schmaltzy YA-ish page-turners about teenage friendships and young love. This one gets people writing reviews like this on Goodreads:

^With tears still running down my cheeks I'm writing this review. I've started this review several times and I don't think I'll be able to adequately put into words the power in which this novel has moved me. Truly [sic] a remarkable story that I, literally, beg everyone who loves historical fiction to read.^

Perhaps my view was jaded by having read her previous books but for me, this was WW2 France as seen through the eyes of an American YA writer. Way too much drama in a short period of time, histrionics and heartbreak (is this what we call "feeeelliinnnggs"?). YES, the subject matter is heart-breaking, and I think a lighter hand with the tear-jerker scenarios would have done it much more justice and actually would have been far more moving. Seems like I am in the minority though.

28. Swimming Home, Deborah Levy
Really liked this. Clever, unnerving take on the middle-class-villa-holiday novel. I haven't read any of her others but will be seeking them out from now on.

Blimey, I cannot believe how quickly this thread has moved in the last week.

Thanks for the new thread. Place marking with my list and update:-

1. The Kingsmakers Daughter - Phillipa Gregory

1. How to Be Both - Ali Smith
2. The Observations - Joanne Harris
3. The White Princess - Phillipa Gregory
4. The Heart Goes Last - Margaret Atwood
5. Frazzled - Ruby Wax

1. The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair

24 Days of Abandonment - Elena Ferrante - Olga's husband suddenly leaves her and this is her account of her struggle to cope with the loss. I read this for my book club and I feel it will make a good choice. I did not warm at all to the main character so found this book a chore. I can imagine that others would really love it though. Looking forward to our next meeting and the discussion.

25 Everything But The Truth - Gillian McAllister - Rachel and Jack have not been together long but Rachel is already pregnant. One day she reads an email on Jack's ipad which leads to her questioning how much she really knows him and how much he really can be trusted. This was an enjoyable and well paced thriller.

The Chilbury Ladies Choir - Jennifer Ryan - I ordered this from the library as I fancied something uplifting and easy to read. By the use of journal entries and letters this book tells the story of the women of the Kent village of Chilbury during World War 2. With most of the men off fighting the vicar disbands the Choir but the women ignore this and reform as the Chilbury Ladies Choir. This helps provide the women with companionship and emotional support to get through the turmoil of war. Telling the story through journal entries and letters worked really well in the book and I liked the different perspectives this allowed the reader to gain.

Currently reading The Hand That First Held Mine - Maggie O'Farrell

Currently skimming through The Romanovs by Simon Sebag Montefiore. Lots of sex and death with a side helping of dwarf-tossing. It's quite hard to get the tone right when discussing torture and horrible deaths over the centuries, because they were so many and so grotesque - I think the author occasionally slips into flippancy, but it's hard not to.

Not sure I'll add it to my total as I'm not reading it properly - skipping most the politics to alight on the more lurid anecdotes. Makes Game of Thrones look like a parish council meeting.

I agree with wiltingfast, to add ballast to the support for NLMG. I don't think it's the best book I've ever read but it's a well-written book that raises some interesting issues in an interesting way.

People accept their fate in all sorts of different societal situations that seem incredible from the outside. It is an alternative universe. Our narrator is part of that universe. I don't need a book to laboriously detail every single action that was taken to create the universe. You obviously couldn't practically clone everyone as you would double the population size and of course not everyone would ever need an organ, so you have a 'pool' of organ donors fresh and ready to give.

Sorry finger slip!! Trying to say that She wolves has been on my radar for a while. Have I missed a review? Was it good? Assuming it was a highlight for you as it is in bold.

Composteleana

Cote, this is boring. You find it unbelievable. I do not.

People clearly do not always rebel, frequently stand there and take it, including looming death.

But I am tbh v bored of the topic . I only engage in it at all to provide some balance to the unreasonably heavy criticism it gets here and assure others that this isn't actually a NLMG bashing thread.

"You wouldn't clone yourself. A baby's lungs would be no good to you - you'd have to wait years until your clone was old enough, by which point you'd probably be dead."

Ideally, you would be cloned shortly after birth, so your clone would grow up with you and always have perfectly-proportioned organs for you to use.

Otherwise no need to go through the trouble and expense of cloning people for spare organs, since you will have the same tissue rejection problems as from any stranger.

Thank you so much ChessieFL
Have about an hour and a half driving today, (So listening to Audible) -so it has until I get home to spark a flicker of interest or it's going back for a refund.

Updated list:

1. The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper
2. The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding - Agatha Christie
3. Our Endless Numbered Days - Claire Fuller
4. Love Letters of Henry V111 to Anne Boleyn (totally counting this even though it's only about 70 pages, I'll read an extra long one at some point to balance it out!)

1. Toast - Nigel Slater
2. A Man Called Ove - Fredrick Backman
3. Chess - Stefan Zweig
4. Beauvallet- Georgette Heyer

Just finished The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North - I'm not sure what to say about this one. It's taken me over a week to read because I gave up for a few days in the middle as I really didn't like it. But having just finished it I feel more favourable, it was clever and a good idea raising some interesting questions, and I found myself more invested in how it turned out than I would have predicted when reading the first 50-60%, but I did find so much of it either tedious or gratuitously grim in its returning to scenes of torture, that I can't say I enjoyed it. Follows the story of one Harry August, who discovers he is a 'kalachakra' - destined to live his life over and over again, remembering the past lives and reliving them. Eventually he discovers others of his kind and the novel plays around with ideas of morality, the butterfly effect and how far it is possible/desirable/wise to change events of history. Until Harry meets the villain of the piece who doesn't stick to the other kalachakras rules of not drawing attention to yourself and not messing with the overall arc of history, and so sets a course that will ultimately bring about the end of the world.

You wouldn't clone yourself. A baby's lungs would be no good to you - you'd have to wait years until your clone was old enough, by which point you'd probably be dead.

Cote what you're calling as 'rubbish', I'm calling as 'we don't really know how it works in this parallel universe because we haven't been told'. I can suspend disbelief when a book is good enough, and for me this one was (just about, though I may have wanted to slap the narrator a bit).

Nothing wrong with that, Museum. I like a bit of unreliable narrator

The problem here is that the scientific premise of the whole clones & organ harvesting thing is rubbish. If ever people are cloned for organs, it will be so that there is no tissue rejection when you need an organ - get tissue from your own clone. What doesn't make sense is going through all the trouble of making clones, and then harvesting their organs randomly and not according to the need of the person they are cloned from. Which means tissue rejection and a lifetime on immune system suppressants, just as is the case at present.

Some clones are chosen as carers, so their organs are not harvested - again, doesn't make sense. Why go to the trouble of cloning if you won't use them?

But NLMG is narrated in the first person by someone who doesn't question things, so, quite rightly, the author only makes her comment on things that she thinks are important, and she either doesn't know, or doesn't want to know, or chooses not to tell us, about the science element. Frustrating as that might be for the reader, I think it's a legitimate way to play it, and doesn't make it not sci-fi. Not the conventional way sci-fi is done, I'll grant you

Yes passme re: issue laden. I think sometimes he is the male version of Jodi Picoult (not that I've read any, but, still) but with more critical cachet.

Fortuna - "all these buns you have thrown at me"

No no no, this isn't a bun fight. It's a book debate. This is what we do If 50-Bookers fell out every time we rip into debate Never Let Me Go, we would not have made it past the 2nd year (and we are on the 5th year now).

"I could ignore the science element, it is fiction after all."

Whaaaat? This is science-fiction. The science has to be there in a book that talks about cloning and harvesting organs for transplants, and it has to be solid. That is why it is so hard to write good SF, which makes sense and is not only internally consistent but also consistent with everything we know about the universe.

Never Let Me Go is one of those sad SF books that was aptly described as "scienceless SF" in an earlier 50-Book thread along with Station 11. As a big SF fan, I assure you that SF books in particular cannot "ignore the science element"

Stokey - Yes, we did the Never Let Me Go debate last year and the year before, all the way back to 2013

Re Iain Banks - I read 8 of his books in quick succession and had to admit that his stuff is just too airy fairy, too sanitised, too... happy for me. People, robots, everyone just gets along etc. I thought Player Of Games wasn't bad just because I like the idea, but it just wasn't well developed at all. It would have been one hell of a story if Neal Stephenson wrote it IMHO.

I have only ever read that and the one with the hot air balloon. It's all a bit determinedly issue laden

I think if Never Let Me Go had been narrated by 'the one that got away' or 'the one that questioned it all and rebelled' it would have been a more conventional and less interesting book (and we wouldn't be having this discussion again). That the narrator is so passive about her fate, and so unquestioning about, well, anything, adds to the dreamlike - sleepwalking - quality of the book, but also means the mechanics of it all are never explained to the reader (a.k.a. 'plot holes'). I liked it and found it frustrating in equal measure... but I think I liked being frustrated by it

Yes the supermarket scene is awful. He can certainly write but rarely uses his power for good imo.

Nothing like starting a bunfight and walking away. I wasn't expecting such a reaction.

I enjoyed Never Let Me Go, it gave me a lot to chew on, not to mention all these buns you have thrown at me.

I could ignore the science element, it is fiction after all. I thought it showed what it is like to be institutionalised well. They readily accept things because that is just how it is done. For those born into cult settings or extreme religions, if you are indoctrinated from birth and with limited access to external influences how much would you question the world you live in? In 'A Few Good Men', one soldier is asked if the directions to the mess hall are in the rule book. When he says no, he is asked how he knew where it was. The answer - he simply followed everyone else.

I know the book didn't explicitly lay out every element of every point, but I don't think it needed to. Sometimes things just are that way as a societal norm and people accept it without question.

Fascinating discussion. Vaguely reminds me of advice my education tutor gave me at uni "passme, never forget that every single pupil could just get up and walk out and there is nothing you could do about it" the fact that most kids don't is a debate in itself.

I thought We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves was alright. I enjoyed it at the time and some of the description is good but not one I would rush to recommend.

The discussion about A Child In Time was interesting as well. I read that before becoming a parent and I am not sure I could read it now. I genuinely think of it almost every single time I am in a supermarket. I suppose in that respect it has changed my life without meaning that to sound too hyperbolic. I remember the supermarket scene so vividly and then the father having to face going home without her to tell the mother. Absolutely hideous and makes my heart race just thinking about it.

I really didn't like We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. I knew there was a twist, but not what the twist was but had guessed it pretty quickly from Fern's treatment etc. Then I thought it just got really boring and animal liberation front. I skim read the latter half of the book.

Hope Jahren discusses plants' self protection and communication techniques in Lab Girl. (Monthly plug accomplished!)