Tragedy in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go

Sometimes you write 2,000 words in 2 hours because you just can’t stop thinking about a book you read.

Never Let Me Go is Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 quietly atmospheric dystopian novel which centers on Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy as they grow from childhood into adulthood. In rural England, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy grow up secluded from the outside world but are constantly reminded by the teachers at their posh boarding school that they are incredibly special children. As they grow up, they come to realize the ways in which they’re different from the rest of the people in the world, and they all deal with the truth in different ways.

Major spoilers ahead. Also, probably typos because I wrote this in one coffee-frenzied sitting.

Dreaming of something better

Let’s talk about Ruth as a character, her journey, and what it means in the context of the world she lives in. Ruth was the kind of person who used to dream. She wanted to work in an office with her friends, an office where there would be “the plants, the gleaming office equipment, the chairs with their swivels and castors” (144). She dreamed of another kind of life even as she knew it wasn’t available to her. There was no way out of the life she led as a clone.

This is in contrast to Kathy, who, as she narrates the novel, is usually matter-of-fact about the circumstances of her life. She will donate her organs to strangers she’s never met. She will never be able to have children. She will never truly belong to the larger world because she isn’t like the rest of the normal people in the world. She’s a clone, and Hailsham and the students she’s grown up with are her world; the world outside has never been hers.

And truthfully, even if she did want to claim the outside world as her own, the rest of the people in the world would never let her.

Kathy has no illusions.

But Ruth, her best friend, hopes so hard that she even inspires Kathy, despite Kathy’s determined realism. Ruth describe her “dream future” — this lovely, futuristic office environment — with such desire that even Kathy wonders “if maybe it was all feasible: if one day [they] might all of [them] move into a place like that and carry on [their] lives together” (144). Kathy allows herself to imagine such a future for them, one in which they are almost normal people. Kathy explains of their “dream futures”:

I’m not sure what was going on in our heads… Maybe once Hailsham was behind us, it was possible, just for that half year or so, before all the talk of becoming carers, before the driving lessons… it was possible to forget for whole stretches of time who we really were… (142)

They even catch the tiniest glimpse of what it might be like to be “normal” in a Dover art gallery. They’re in town, looking for Ruth’s clone model, her “possible”, and they follow her into an art gallery, but Ruth’s possible leaves, another woman approaches them.

Eventually, the silver-haired lady came out from behind her desk… and asked: “Are you art students?”

“Not exactly,” I said before Tommy could respond. “We’re just, well, keen.”

The silver-haired lady beamed, then started to tell us how the artist whose work we were looking at was related to her, and all about the artist’s career thus far… we gathered round her to listen, the way we might have done at Hailsham when a guardian started to speak. (164)

This moment is notable because they’re treated just like any other teenagers in the world might be treated. It’s a glimpse of normality.

This Dover trip marks the end of Ruth’s dreaming, at least for herself. The woman she hoped was her clone model doesn’t look like her, after all, and she feels stupid for hoping.

…turning to Chrissie and Rodney [Ruth] went on: “…We all know it, so why don’t we all face it. We’re not modelled from that sort… We’re modelled from trash. Junkies, prostitutes, winos, tramps. Convicts, maybe… That other woman in there, her friend, the old one in the gallery. Art students, that’s what she thought we were. Do you think she’d have talked to us if she’d know what we really were? What do you think she’d have said if we ask her? ‘Excuse me, but do you think your friend was ever a clone model?’ She’d have thrown us out.

No more dreaming for Ruth, nor for Kathy, either. While the rumor of getting a deferral in the name of love takes hold of Tommy and briefly enchants Kathy with possibility, they all ultimately lose faith and lose track of each other.

Resignation to her reality, hopeful for her friends

[Tommy] put up a hand to shield his eyes. “I wasn’t much good as a carer… I’m a pretty good donor, but I was a lousy carer.”

No one spoke for a while. Then Ruth said, her voice quieter now:

“I think I was a pretty decent carer. But five years felt about enough for me. I was like you, Tommy. I was pretty much ready when I became a donor. It felt right. After all, it’s what we’re supposed to be doing, isn’t it?” (227)

What strikes me is Ruth’s use of “supposed to be” here, which is echoed by other characters throughout the novel. There is no room to grow beyond their intended purpose; they were created to donate their organs when they reach an age of maturity, and that’s all they can ever do. Ruth has been changed by the reality of spending five years caring for clones just like herself, who are donating their organs and dying for it. Her old friends are “completing,” or dying, and she’s no longer got room for dreaming of another kind of life.

Not for herself, anyway. At this point, too, she’s ill and hasn’t recovered well from her donations. Whether or not anyone will say it, she’s resigned herself to her own oncoming death, which she knows will be sooner rather than later. She won’t survive past her second donation.

She still dreams, but no longer for herself: for Kathy and Tommy, who are in love.

“Kathy, listen,” Ruth said. “You and Tommy, you’ve got to try and get a deferral. If it’s you two, there’s got to be a chance. A real chance.” (233)

Because Kathy and Tommy have been quietly loving each other for years, and their quiet affection and bond means that if anyone could disrupt the track on its way to their inevitable deaths, it’s them. Tommy and Kathy could have a real shot at spending a few years together and not dying so young.

No Hope

Of course, that’s not what happens. There are no deferrals, no softness for clones in this world. As Madame tries to explain to Kathy, the kindness of old world will not keep hold of the students, and they will inevitably be tumbled forward into their fates. They never had a choice at all. In the face of Tommy’s looming death, Kathy and Tommy’s relationship falls apart, but they have an interesting conversation before they part for good.

Then, as we were sitting in the dull light, side by side on the edge of his bed, he said to me:

“… don’t you get tired of being a carer? All the rest of us, we became donors ages ago. You’ve been doing it for years. Don’t you sometimes wish, Kath, they’d hurry up and send you your notice?” (282)

What I read in Tommy’s line is the same resignation expressed earlier by Ruth, but to a greater degree, now that he knows there’s no chance at all for him and Kathy to have any part kind of normal relationship with each other, untouched by the fact of what they are. After all, if they’re going to die, anyway, why waste time? They might as well get on with their fate if there’s no chance to defer it. He says as much when reflecting on the debate between Miss Emily and Miss Lucy.

Miss Emily, at this point, has told them of the debate, which amounted to whether it was better to raise the clones in ignorance of their role in the world while continuing to educate them and let them express their creative souls, or whether it might be better to tell them the truth even if the clones conclude that their art and writing is pointless since they’re going to be killed, anyway. Miss Lucy believed in informing the students; Miss Emily did not.

… as we were going down a particularly dark lane in the back of nowhere, he said suddenly, “I think Miss Lucy was right. Not Miss Emily.” (273)

In other words, better to know the truth and accept your fate rather than live with the illusion that you actually matter to the wider world.

Kathy, for the most part, holds her feelings close to her chest throughout the novel, but when she does confess her feelings to the reader, she’s resigned and realistic. As always, matter-of-fact. But her response to Tommy asking if she wouldn’t rather just get it over with, get on with her life’s purpose already, contains the subtlest hints of a rebellion:

I shrugged. “I don’t mind. Anyway, it’s important there are good carers. And I’m a good carer.” (282)

In other words, Kathy might be a clone, but she has more to contribute more to the world than just her organs. She says as much on the very first page:

I do know for a fact they’ve been pleased with my work, and by and large, I have too. My donors have always tended to do much better than expected. Their recovery times have been impressive, and hardly any of them have been classified as “agitated,” even before fourth donation. Okay, maybe I am boasting now. But it means a lot to me, being able to do my work well, especially that bit about my donors staying “calm.” I’ve developed a kind of instinct around donors. (3)

She has a lot more to offer the world than people might think she does, and to a degree, the mysterious powers-that-be have recognized that by letting her be a carer for a full 12 years before becoming an organ donor.

Miss Lucy vs. Miss Emily

By the end of novel, I agreed with Miss Lucy, too.

The effect of the students being kept ignorant means that the students never had any agency, no chance to rebel or protest that their lives are unfair. They don’t even fully understand what it means to be a normal person who can choose to be an actress or even just work in an office. These career options aren’t available to them because their only purpose — in the minds of normal people, anyway — is to donate all their vital organs and endlessly sacrifice their own lives and their own potential for people they’ve never met. They’re not only denied a full picture of what their role in the world is, but they’re also denied the chance to realize how monstrously inhumane their lives are. After all, what does it matter if they’re well-read and clever and might want children and fall in love if they’re just going to be sacrificed, anyway?

They’re only going to get sacrificed by a world that can’t even bring themselves to acknowledge this horrible thing they’re asking, that refuses to even see them as human.

In a different novel, had the students understood their role in the world, had they not been raised separately on different estates all over the country, had they not been constantly been split up and moved around and kept ignorant, they might’ve had a chance to rebel against the cruelty of their world.

Musings on Empire and Power

A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan #1)A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I tried very hard not to be influenced by the knowledge that this won the 2020 Hugo, but I think I failed. It’s certainly very different from the previous nominees I’ve read. I think this book plays it a little safer than the previous two books I read did. A Memory Called Empire put forth a fascinating world with interesting characters and languages, but it feels like it took fewer risks.

Teixcalaan the empire reminds me a bit of America as it is today, how it dominates so much of the world despite geographically dominating relatively little. I did catch the Aztec references and thought they were intriguing. Still, I felt just a bit disconcerted by a seemingly-white author borrowing so many elements from Aztec culture. That said, I don’t know Martine’s identity, and she could be light-skinned or mixed, as I am.

I’m really interested in how the Teixcalaanli language is so referential. I’m sure there are languages and cultures that are actually like this, maybe even my own, but because I speak one language, this just reminded me of what it’s like speaking to people on Tumblr. How we all know the same memes are constantly referencing and remaking those memes as a memes to communicate, how we references the same events, our Befores and Afters.

This book is supremely readable on a sentence-to-sentence level. For a book that is so dedicated to the use of language, I expected this book to have the kind of technical control over its own sentence construction I’d found in previous Hugo nominees. This book privileged plot over sentences mechanics, and as someone who loves her sentence mechanics, I was a little disappointed by that, but more plot-focused readers might enjoy it. For these reasons, it felt a little jarring when Teixcalaanli poetry entered the page — sometimes beautiful, sometimes bad, but always with a rhythm and a meter that made it such a contrast to the surrounding paragraphs. As a language nerd, I rested in those stanzas: Released, I am a spear in the hands of the sun.

I did appreciate when the language was used to convey an emotional energy, which happened more toward the end of the book. “[—] thought of how the water shimmered too, how water and light moved the same way, if you thought about physics correctly. Ripples.” That line worked so well to convey the emotional exhaustion the character felt.

Character-wise, the dynamic between Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass was so much fun. I felt very invested in the bond between them and their interactions, which had such interesting layers to it — layers which I didn’t entirely understand, as an American living in America (another kind of empire), but perhaps a reader who grew up outside of an empire would understand. There was an interesting recurring theme of Mahit and Three Seagrass arguing and misunderstanding each other over the question of who is a citizen, who is a person, who is human, how an empire works, what a person’s blindspots are within and without an empire. “If you were one of us,” and all that, and the lines between being a citizen and being a xenophile.

There was a death count as the book went on, and I think some of those character deaths felt rather cheap and predictable. There were very few, if any, character deaths that I-reading-as-Mahit mourned because Mahit had clearly never really bonded with those characters. The sadness didn’t land because the story hadn’t worked to endear those characters to us. Felt like a missed opportunity.

I am fascinated by the emotional story arc that builds and crescendos at the end of the book: “She wouldn’t have become part of that strange triangle.” For me, this was the most interesting part of the book — everything about the permutations of love, all the various forms it can take, and what it means to be a ghost or to be born again. There are so many possible emotional complications of a dead ambassador being replaced with a younger, alive ambassador who meets all of the dead ambassador’s friends, acquaintances, and lovers. I wish that had been explored sooner because it felt like such an interesting complication that came to a head very late in the book.

The imagery, when rendered as metaphor or simile, is remarkably consistent — fruits/floral imagery or space/stationer imagery. As an aforementioned language nerd, I thought the metaphor choice felt very appropriate to these characters, their referential experiences, and the cultures from which they hail.

The only major critique I have of this book is that it takes place in such a short time, and so much changes in those handful of days, but as a reader, I couldn’t appreciate those changes because we never got to know the world well enough in the first place. If the world is never going to be the same, I want to know what it was like before. Yes, six days can change an empire and an entire sector of space, but squeezing all that story into six days meant we didn’t get the sense of scale that monumental changes should warrant. It all just kinda happened…I’ll maybe edit this part later if I figure out how to word this. In my opinion, the timeline didn’t match up with the worldbuilding, is what I’m trying to say.

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Middlegame Ups the Stakes

Middlegame (Middlegame, #1)Middlegame by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

(4.75/5)

“Her smile is the first brick in what she will one day call the improbable road. Today, now, in this moment, they are beginning their voyage toward the Impossible City… The deed is done. It’s too late to turn back now.”

This is one of those books that redefines what a single book is capable of achieving alone. This book is comprehensive, moving through such a range of concepts, layers upon layers of metaphor, worldbuilding, and timelines that it feels like at least three books in one. I have so many questions for Seanan McGuire: did she outline this book? Did she outline the up-and-under stories, too? What did those outlines even look like? In what order was this written? How did the manuscript change from draft to draft?

This book is a feat. Every single event in here is the culmination of all previous choices, and this is both explicit and implicit. I truly can’t count how many timelines exist on the page, because for every explicit timeline reset, there were more that happened between the lines of the page. The final series of events is as inevitable as it is improbable.

The writing in here is so strong, even at the sentence-to-sentence level. I love the parenthesis and how McGuire makes her punctuation work for her to tell the story and imply how much information is being consciously acknowledged, what’s actually a secret, and what’s unknown to the characters. This is a technique I see more in fanfiction than published work, and it works super well here.

McGuire has this way of sinking down into her characters’ perspectives until it feels like I, as the reader, am occupying some small corner of the characters’ minds, watching it all play out but unable to change anything. I do think this comes through much more strongly with the twins, their friends, and allies, and less so with Reed and Leigh, but seeing as the book focuses so much more on the twins’ side of the story, that makes sense, even if I wish we’d had a little more “sinking down” into the other characters’ heads.

Every emotion in here is a gut-punch. As the book goes on, we get deeper and deeper into one character’s perspective, and I absolutely didn’t expect them to become my favorite, but god, I adore them. This book obviously does many things very well, but if I had to pick one thing that worked perfectly, it’s the fact that in a book full of horrific tragedies, there’s this one tragedy that stands out. It’s not foregrounded very often, but when it does, the bitter fact is this: if a tragedy were to befall the twins, they’d have each other and all the power in the universe as consolation, but not everyone has something as consolation. Sometimes, everything that ever mattered to you is ripped away, and there’s emptiness in the world, and you’re so tired and just want to rest, but you can’t… and it doesn’t even matter. (I have a lot of feelings about this minor storyline.) (Hands down, my favorite part of this book.) (I would fight a war for this character.)

There’s a fascinating commentary on how intelligence gets gendered. Dodger and Roger both observe how the world just doesn’t know what to do with a mathematics genius who’s a girl, and how she just doesn’t fit the world’s idea of a smart girl. A girl can be book-smart, but math-smart just isn’t normal. This fades as the characters grow up and instead becomes a commentary on strength, on who gets to weak and who have to always, always be strong. Who is allowed to fall down and cry and stay fallen, and who can’t. I’m still thinking my way through the idea of strength, to be honest, because most, if not all, of the characters in here can fit that; there is very little rest in here for anyone.

Having finished the book, I’m especially interested in the parental characters and in the contrasts between their two sets of parents. Also, I feel like one of the parents was characterized a little inconsistently. One of the twins has this fascinating book-long journey about when a lie is permissible, but I thought the implication at first was that this kid needs powerful lies to save them because they’re terrified on their abusive parent. As in, why do you need a life to save your life when you are still a literal child? But it was only there at the beginning, and then they have a normal parent-child relationship for the rest of the book. I just feel like the implication was in there from a previous draft… oooo, or maybe a previous timeline?

There are some things I wish we’d gotten more of or spent more time on, especially toward the end of the book. For as long as it is, some things were barely in the book. The Up-and-Under as a metaphor for alchemy and a parallel for Roger and Dodger was excellent when delivered side-by-side with the main story, but when the main story begins using Up-and-Under terminology literally, the logic of the story falls apart for me. I still enjoy it! But I do think we needed more explanation for what is literally happening. The end feels a bit disconnected from the rest of the book for this reason. I had lingering questions, like what exactly happened between Asphodel and her enemies? Why would manifesting the Impossible City in their world be a controversial idea? Also, what even is the Impossible City? “The whole damn Impossible City is about to fall on your head” sounds super cool, but I still have no idea what that actually would look like, physically, literally, etc.

This is second time I’ve read a Hugo-nominated book and been so blown away that it’s revised my standards, so the lesson I’m taking is this “read all the nominees” challenge I’m doing should be a yearly routine.

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A Book I’ve Been Waiting For

Little & LionLittle & Lion by Brandy Colbert
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sometimes a book comes along, and it’s so good it makes you rethink every other book you’ve read that tackled similar subject matter. Little & Lion was that book for me, setting the new standard for books about mental illness, difficult romantic relationships, and fraught families. I’ve seen a little bit on the internet on how there wasn’t much of a plot, and I guess that’s true or false depending on what counts as a plot for you. For me, the driving force of the plot was Suzette’s struggle to accept herself, to feel safe, to protect the people she loves. Above all, she just wanted to feel safe and secure, and for better or worse, every choice she makes is driven by that deep emotional need.

When the book begins, she’s on the tails of a traumatic spring semester and is realizing she’s bisexual, trying to figure out what that means. Her brother is bipolar, and their relationship has fractured as he tries to rewrite his identity to include his mental illness but never, never be defined by it. Suzette’s anxiety and fear for her brother’s safety was so palpable, and I cried so much in this book for her. I really appreciated that there were a variety of opinions on how Lionel’s mental illness should be considered, but that Lionel’s safety was so prioritized.

It meant so much to me that Suzette’s feelings were validated. Throughout the story, she was so anxious, afraid, and confused. People lashed out at her and hurt her, but then they apologized and acknowledged how they hurt her, and Suzette forgave and loved them anyway because she’s an absolute gem who’s too good for this world.

Suzette has this line about how when you mess up, you apologize, and I appreciated how that came due at the end of the book. An apology may not fix the thing you broke or the person you hurt, but it means so much to openly acknowledge that you hurt someone. I didn’t know how much I missed that in other books until I finished this book and clutched it to my chest and was retroactively angry on behalf of other books’ characters who never got their feelings validated at all.

I also love how the romantic storyline concluded. I think it was perfect for Suzette, and I appreciate her growth and ability to prioritize her own needs and desires.
I honestly don’t have the words for what this book meant to me.

Okay I’m gonna say something spoiler-y after all the dashes below, so skip if you don’t want to be spoiled, but I think if anyone gets triggered or upset by unhealthy dynamics the way I do, it would help them to know the spoiler-y thing when they go into the book.
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Although there are definitely hints of unhealthy dynamics in this book, especially with how Suzette watches Rafaela enjoy and delight in Lionel’s spontaneous joy while he’s hypomanic, and how it just makes Suzette feel like she’s the crazy one for being so scared for her brother, I appreciate so much that Suzette realized how badly matched she and Rafaela would be romantically, even if they’re super attracted to each other.

I am so happy for her that she recognized, “Huh, Rafeala is amazing, but her behavior caused me stress, so I don’t want to be around it or to date her,” and was able to articulate what she did need from a relationship by the end of the book. As someone who has been in a relationship that constantly kept me in that feeling of stress and fear, I was so relieved that Suzette figured that out and saved herself from further distress.

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Reality Pedagogy for the Modern Teacher

 

For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood… and the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education by Christopher Emdin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is so helpful, and I’d recommend it to anyone about to start teaching. I was a TA who got thrown into the deep end of teaching last fall, and had I read this book sooner, reality pedagogy would’ve made my class so much better. Some helpful concepts I would’ve loved to incorporate into my classes: cogens, coteaching (especially coteaching!), cosmo duos, a cosmopolitan attitude in the classroom. I loved the chapter towards the end on the importance of dressing yourself well and having an aesthetically pleasing classroom, because that reinforces what I already believed but had never applied to pedagogy. Also, yes, of course, your clothing matters.

Although this book is primarily aimed at white teachers who teach urban youth/neoindigenous kids, the pedagogy it presents could be useful for any teacher teaching to a classroom of students whose background differs from their own. Coteaching, especially, can be adapted for any situation because it allows the students to lead by example and show the teacher how they learn best.

I would love to read further on the subject of teaching kids to codeswitch because although there are great examples to show your students in the “Codeswitching” chapter, I still have questions about how a teacher would present this to their students.

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The Arts Will Save Your Life

A Song for a New DayA Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

At first, I found the sharp divide between Luce’s Before and Rosemary’s After to be jarring, and I struggled to reconcile that, but the book made a great case for its deuteragonists’ POVs as their timelines synced up. I connected with Luce more immediately, partially because of the first person perspective, but also because her early pages show her reckoning with her new reality in a way that we’ve all now had to do. I cried while reading about the documentaries that book characters were making of their own changed realities, even started my own “Don’t Forget Normal” list.

This book was an open wound until I read this line: “Fear is a virus. Music is a virus and a vaccine and a cure.” I know it’s not totally applicable to our pandemic, but if the previous pages had broken me open, this line put me back together and gave me hope.

I love how Rosemary’s panic attacks and fear were handled. The book hit a good balance of Rosemary’s issues in particular. How her parents raised her in isolation to protect her from a newly dangerous world while also depriving her of some sorely needed human connections. How afraid that made her and how hard it was to unlearn that, how there were panic attacks and triggers, and she didn’t like to be touched. Though the book ultimately argues that people should be allowed to congregate again now that the pox is no longer a threat and attacks have ceased, Rosemary’s experience of entering the wider world is given the respect it deserves.

The way the story takes us from Luce’s young adulthood into her mid-thirties and manages to shift her voice just enough is really impressive. You can literally feel that she’s gotten older after the timejump, and I really adored older, wiser, slightly jaded Luce.

Sometimes dual perspectives take me out of a story, and that did sometimes happen to me in here, but like I said, the book really earned its right to have both POVs. This story can’t exist without the two of them. Rosemary could see the flaws in Luce’s logic, and Luce could spot the dangers that Rosemary’s naivete didn’t let her see. There was a line at one point about weaponizing enthusiastic kids that just cut straight to my heart.

This book feels like a blueprints for survival, or at least something like it. I was jotting down ideas for socially distanced arthaus events that I thought of as I read.

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Everything Magical

Silver in the Wood (The Greenhollow Duology, #1)Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There has never been a more Marisa book in all of existence.

This book is so magical and mystical, and I adore it.

I deeply love how Tobias’s voice is characterized in this. A paragraph may run with a tangent that builds in emotional intensity as he considers how fairies feels emotions vs. how mortals feels emotions, and then all of sudden, the paragraph will just cut off as Tobias realizes why he’s obsessing about this and forces himself to stop being a “fool.”

On that note, too, I quite like how Bramble’s friendship with Tobias is written. She may not be human, but she loves Tobias very much in her own way, and their ride-or-die friendship is great.

Fabian was this scary-slick charming villain who sauntered onto the page, and Tesh did a great job of making me feel just as afraid of him as Tobias was. I was afraid of his possessiveness, especially because Fabian considers so many things to be his — the woods, Tobias, the beautiful young men who walk near his forest. Everything is his to claim, and that is terrifying.

The romance in here is incredibly sweet. Tobias’s longing for Henry Silver hovers between every line, and all his despair at the reasons this fondness is impossible. It heightened the tension when both of them are inevitably put in fairy danger.

Silver’s mother is an absolute gem, and the constellation of relationships between Tobias, Henry, and Mrs. Silver is my favorite aspect of this novella. There’s something so warm and cozy about how they all relate to each other. Everything that was so impossible earlier in the story becomes possible and becomes a family once all three of them have space in the story.

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Thoughtful Meditations

SeveranceSeverance by Ling Ma
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love how the title word Severance is interpreted and re-interpreted throughout this book.

Time slips in interesting ways in this book, from present to past and present again, and I’m tempted to take a second look at this book and track its progression. Something specific I noted about the passage of time is how realistic in felt in the “past” timeline that immediately preceded New York City’s evacuation; it reminds me of the way my own coronavirus journal reads when my situation was at its most urgent.

Similarly, I found the in-universe symbolism of the masks to be fascinating. Although Shen Fever is a fungus-borne illness and not spread by respiratory droplets (unlike COVID-19), the healthy people wear masks to signal to other people that they are still cognizant and unaffected. It is the mark of the un-fevered. It’s hard not to parallel that to our current situation somehow, even I’m currently too braindead to parse out the specific similarities and differences.

I know this book is supposed to be a rallying cry against our current consumer office-drone culture, and I see elements of the capitalism critique, but I think the critique of our working culture is less impactful because of the way Candace is characterized. She’s characterized as a constant loner, someone who holds herself at a distance with most people. “Spend time with your family,” an overseas colleague tells her, but where would Candace even go? Candace always held herself apart from her coworkers; they aren’t her family. The closest thing to family she seems to have is her ex-boyfriend, who breaks up with her and tries to convince her to move away with him, and her old roommate, who she lost years earlier when their lease was up. She’s a loner. So Candace’s dedication to work and to projects plays less as a character flaw and more like a woman who’s solitary and wants to fill her time with something meaningful.

On that note, I wanted something more of the end of the book, but that’s me, always wanting to know everything. Craft-wise, I thought the final chapters were very much aligned with how Candace is characterized throughout the book.

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Fascinating, but I Wanted More

Church of MarvelsChurch of Marvels by Leslie Parry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book started strong with an interesting mystery at the heart of it — well, actually several mysteries that branched from a single incident.

I enjoyed these characters, but the second half fell flat to me as the mysteries started getting answered. The revelation of Alphie’s “big secret”, especially, didn’t sit right with me — it was trope-y and felt like it was there for shock value — and from the minute her secret was revealed, the book began relying heavily on exposition, as though to say, “You see, this is how it happened, and I would’ve told you earlier, but I couldn’t, because story structure.” It made for unsatisfying resolutions. Alphie and Belle’s story is basically left unresolved except for an epilogue infodump which has to work overtime to make up for the pacing/secrecy issues in their earlier chapters.

Odile and Sylvan’s story felt like they had the best pace and a kind of a closure by the end. Still, there were elements that felt like they didn’t get enough buildup to entirely earn the ending. That said, I still like their endings, for its emotional resolution qualities.

Overall, an enjoyable book, but it doesn’t really stand out from the gazillions of good literary fiction books out there.

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“Delightfully Bendy”

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal GirlPaul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Delightfully bendy!

EDIT:
This book was delightfully bendy and kept me constantly trying to untangle its interpretation of gender. It seemed to reinforce the gender binary one moment, and then to tear apart the binary a moment later. I’m intrigued that Paul never seemed to entirely identify with either being a boy or a girl; however he transformed his body, it didn’t change who he was inside in the slightest. Sometimes I had surface level knee-jerk reactions — like feeling a little defensive while reading Paul’s assessment of femininity and women — but Paul had such fascinating observations, and there was truth in a lot of what he observed. I loved this little adventure book.

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