Light Summer Reads That Make You Feel Good About the World

. Kenneth Ishaguro's Never Let Me Go: Look on the bright side, at least you have a purpose...

There is not much more, or better I could say than what the Illiterate already has. (If you haven't yet, you should read his post on this novel.)

This was my pick. I had a stack of books I wanted to get to in 2026, and then some of them started sliding into the 2027pile. Amongst those was Ken Ishaguro's of the Day. However, as I looked at the growing and precariously leaning stack of books on nightstand, I kept thinking,I should have picked up Never Let Me Go. I knew the broad premise, was aware of the Keira Knightly movie, and had been meaning to read it for over a decade.

When the Illiterate magically appeared and said book club is back on and he wanted to get three books in before the end of the year. (A book a piece.)  I wanted
something short, a novel that we could all get through without much trouble.
But I also wanted it to be a good pick. And by good, I was looking for literary
and provoking, not merely entertaining. I picked up that copy of Remains of
the Day and almost pulled the trigger, but then thought, why not Never
Let Me Go? None of us had read it, I was looking for reason to jump it
ahead of Remains, and I had a gut feeling it would work well. Maybe not the feel-good pick of the year, but something that would sit andlinger a little bit.

Which it did. And will. It is odd to have something so elegant and beautifully written, invoke what I can only describe as a quiet horror - or existential dread. As the story advances and the curtain pulls back inch by inch, you start to realize... (Spoiler free posts kiddos, go read the book.)

A lot of the group discussion (by which I mean a series of text messages late at night while I was moderately buzzed) centered around the hopeless aspect, and the frustration that these kids just kind of moped about and ultimately accepted what was going to happen to them. They barely fought it.

However, that is looking at the story out of context. We assume how we would act, because we were raised to be different than them. They were raised to accept their inevitable ends, to not really know, and definitely not question, the world they were raised in. They were raised to accept their horrible purpose, which from another point of view is really no purpose at all.

Which isn't to say they don't have a purpose. I'm not here to get into theological debates or discussions, but outside of base and dehumanizing purpose the society of the novel has assigned to them, they have a much higher purpose. A common purpose of existence, keepers of the fire so to say. It is the degraded and dehumanized civilization around them that is ultimately without greater purpose. A civilization in the throes of losing its soul. The same abyss that Tommy screams into at the end.

This is where the real horror sinks in. Because I imagine the Britain of the novel, looks a lot like the Britain of the late 1990's. Their world is ours, with just a tiny
twist. And it doesn't take much imagination to see our world taking the same
paths as theirs