OF A GOLDEN AGE

I laughed at this sort of orange-yellow-brown yarn I picked up in a grab bag somewhere. Its makers describe it as “antique gold,” and I kept it around in hopes I’d someday need to make a vintage-looking Cowardly Lion costume or something. Then by chance it fell into the big yarn bin next to this color I like terribly, what you’d probably call a raspberry — a deep, rich pink that could maybe not even be pink anymore.

HARMONIOUS COMPLEMENTARY SITUATION.

For visual interest I’m using a slightly off white and a nice neutral charcoal gray as well. It’s a basic feather-and-fan pattern which lends it the wavy shape. Do not adjust your television set.

p.s. Yes, that is a gold sweater clip holding my side spare yarns together — it is a family hand-me-down from my mom or one of her sisters, and I feel strongly that this new use outside of sweaters honors them all.

It’s official at this point that I’m going to become a raving Ishiguro fan, an espouser to strangers, and I will not be afraid to make a fool of myself about it. I love this man’s writing. The two books I read before this were strong, connective stories of people experiencing realizations in their recognizably ordinary lives. Never Let Me Go is as strong if not moreso, with an alternative-history-via-science-fiction twist that I feared would feel gimmicky. It absolutely does not.

Narrator Kathy opens in the present and offers her story in bits and pieces, framed in hindsight. She and her two closest friends at boarding school grew up in great secrecy and in unique circumstances. They are shaped by those circumstances in symbolic ways that come out more concretely than the average schoolday scars. Ishiguro’s use of this extended metaphor reminded me of another of my most favorite romantic science fictions: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. (It also reminded me of the much more lightweight movie TiMER, which is worth checking out even though it’s a more traditional romantic comedy.)

In Eternal Sunshine, Michel Gondry showed us what could happen if we got to act out a prevalent, latent relationship fantasy: What if I could completely wipe out an entire memory of a person, to alleviate the unrelenting pain the memory causes me? Would the resulting holes in my mind outweigh the desired numbness?

Spoiler alert. Turn back now. But seriously, read this book.

Ishiguro offers Kathy and the man she loves the distant chance to win back a few good healthy years after being kept apart in their youth. On paper this sounds like a late-in-life cliche but Kathy and Tommy are barely 30 and unwitting participants in an imaginative Nuclear Age-spawned program to clone people and harvest their organs over time. Crueler still, each “donor” is kept alive and as healthy as possible through donations of two, three, or four vital organs, adding an increased element of mystery and unpredictability to any romantic feelings.

Kathy and Tommy feel the impending doom and pressing of the passage of time everyone else feels, but for them more than almost anyone it is literal. At 31, Kathy is an exception because she hasn’t yet been asked to make her first donation, and one of Ishiguro’s great unanswered questions in the book is why anyone is selected at any time. The unanswered questions are a great coup because they illustrate how seamlessly Ishiguro works this fantastical notion into his story.

It isn’t a novel about clones or organ donation. It isn’t a novel about the politics of postwar England or the science involved or even of the ethics of cloning. Instead, it is a classy, beautiful novel about a handful of special children and the adults they become, with the same feelings of missed opportunity and potential that everyone has. As in Remains of the Day and An Artist of the Floating World, Ishiguro’s first-person narrator reveals big meaty everythings in the course of her plain memories of school and what came after. She is a pleasure to learn about and relate to.

Cannonball logo font: Sketch Rockwell. For more on the Cannonball Read, see Pajiba.

From a chapter entitled “In Praise of English”:

One reason English has accumulated such a vast word hoard is that it is the most hospitable and democratic language that has ever existed. English has never rejected a word because of its race, creed, or national origin.

From Richard Lederer’s The Miracle of Language.

Sweet Sophie girl is mine for a few days. My goodness!

I don’t know, Sue Grafton.

By now, you and I are tight, and you know I’m sold on the Kinsey Millhone mysteries. I love them, and also you, and mysteries in general, and stories about strong women in general.

So I’m going to level with you: I did not like this one. I really did not like it at all, and I feel a little bad about it, but it is the only true misstep in the series so far. There were way too many characters I could barely keep straight, way too many similar-looking conversations with strangers at the bar, way too many shoutouts to a past life that I did not feel I knew enough about to care about.

My review isn’t long because I don’t have much to say. Grafton writes my most consistent favorite books to pick up anytime, when I’m tired of reading something more challenging or can’t get into another book. This time I could barely get through it and found myself feeling annoyed by the idea of bringing it with me to read.

Cannonball logo font: Sketch Rockwell. For more on the Cannonball Read, see Pajiba.

Very warm feet are considered a direct consequence of dog-under-desk. Exhibit A:

Kazuo Ishiguro is a wonder. His book Remains of the Day was part of my twentieth-century British literature class in college, and we marveled at the easy way he portrayed this stuffy, clueless butler as he made self-realizations over the course of the book. When I picked up Artist of the Floating World, I didn’t realize it would be thematically similar, but this book is just as successful.

Where Ishiguro excels is in the unreliable narrator. I’m starting a third book now but am not far enough to make any observations, but I’ll compare to, of course, Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone. Where Kinsey has no self-censorship apart from basic decency, Masuji Ono is guided by etiquette in his life in postwar Japan. As a retired artist and father of two twentysomething women, he must audit his own image while looking for an agreeable marriage match for the younger daughter. Before that, though, he grapples with the realization that his daughters believe he has something to hide or moderate.

Ishiguro writes beautifully, and Sensei Ono speaks in a believably semiformal, respectful way. The difference between his older, more deferential daughter and the younger, more outspoken daughter is clear in their conversations with their father. Sensei Ono flashes back to various points in his career as an artist and talks with several former colleagues who now have mixed or negative feelings toward him. I won’t reveal anything more because Sensei Ono’s realizations are what make the book so enthralling.

Beyond the story itself, Ishiguro’s novel is full of images of pre- and postwar Japan, cultural touchstones of Sensei Ono’s life. He speaks to some invisible contemporary reader, mentioning parks as they appear to him “today” (in the late 1940s) and as he remembers them from decades past. Ishiguro uses a delicate touch and Sensei Ono’s nostalgia reminded me of the way my grandfather talked about the past. This weekend at my parents’ house we read a paragraph my grandfather wrote on the back of a photo from 1929, describing everything as if he were speaking to an audience who wasn’t familiar. Sensei Ono speaks this way and draws you into his complicated life and memories of a Japan in crisis.

Cannonball logo font: Sketch Rockwell. For more on the Cannonball Read, see Pajiba.

Noticing a theme? T is for Trespass is Sue Grafton’s twentieth novel in the so-called alphabet series.

This Kinsey Millhone mystery deviated from the form in a way I’m not sure I like. Instead of telling the whole story through the eyes of classic narratrix Kinsey, Grafton puts parts of the story in the perspective of the sociopath antagonist, Solana Rojas. Solana steals an identity and uses it to push and manipulate an elderly man into surrendering his accumulated financial assets by positioning herself as sole caregiver.

The story itself is solid, feels relevant, and is thought-provoking in a way few of the other novels are. This is not an easily identifiable case of outright theft or wrongdoing, and watching Kinsey spin her wheels as she tries to convince other people what’s going on — after even she didn’t identify some of the red flags — translates directly to the reading experience.

Grafton also explores the nature of aging by contrasting the victim, a small and disagreeable elderly gent of unstable health, with Kinsey’s landlord and his siblings, who are all an unbelievably healthy bunch in their 80s. I appreciated that Grafton brought someone in who is not thriving and who is also not particularly likable, because he contrasts with Kinsey, who is irascible but ultimately goldhearted. I think the sociopath character is also intended to teach Kinsey a lesson, because they share some important traits: very little family, a cunning knack for predicting others’ behavior, a disconnect from certain everyday emotional trappings.

Kinsey ultimately differs in her approach to life. She claims to feel disconnected but her heart beats loud and vibrant for the people she loves, the same as it does for the near-strangers whose unlucky or unfair situations cry out to her sense of justice. I am curious to pick up U is for Undertow to see if Grafton shows any lasting impact on Kinsey, or how the victim from this book will be portrayed, if at all.

Cannonball logo font: Sketch Rockwell. For more on the Cannonball Read, see Pajiba.