Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Fiction

            As a child, all Kathy H. knows is Hailsham, the boarding school where she grows up with the same people, all of whom are also students or teachers. Hailsham keeps Kathy in a bubble by physically isolating her from the outside world, but Kathy is also kept in an information bubble, oblivious to the role that she and her peers play as donors. Ishiguro paints an alternate universe of England during the 1990s, where children like Kathy and those at Hailsham are created to be a source of organs for others.  As Kathy grows up and begins to explore the outside world, she keeps on revisiting her memories at Hailsham. As Kathy gets older and the prospect of her time as a donor draws near, the more she thinks of Hailsham and the more she wishes that Hailsham will never let her go.

Ishiguro’s writing is evocative and his novel beautifully and brilliantly traverses so many different issues. Never Let Me Go is a coming-of-age novel, a love story, a cautionary tale, and a social critique.  The novel provokes difficult questions -- whether ignorance is bliss, how to create an identity when a life path has been pre-established, and whether there can ever be true autonomy in a world that is eerily similar to ours.  It was one of the best novels I’ve read all year – maybe ever – and I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.

The Lowland

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

Fiction

Lahiri’s novel, The Lowland follows four generations of one Indian family over time and distance and through personal turmoil and national conflict. The events in the characters’ personal lives mirror the historical context of the book.  Personal conflicts reflect the larger political conflict that India faced during the same time period and Lahiri juxtaposes the personal drama with the political and social turbulence of Indian and American society during the seventies.  It prods readers to examine their personal lives to find the key moments in their past that continues to affect them in the present. It also prompts the reader to consider how personal events are shaped by political events and the times in which they are lived.  The Lowland is a story of how our lives are shaped by our context, how history continues to shape the future, both on an individual and a societal level, and how personal history can continue to haunt one’s life because of the threads that tie the past to the present.

In Order to Live

In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park

Non Fiction

Yeonmi Park’s memoir describes her escape from North Korea to China at thirteen, her harrowing life in China, her trek through the Gobi Desert, and eventually her adjustment to life as a college student and human rights activist. This remarkable journey depicts the horrors that she faced in North Korea and as a sex slave in China. These hardships include the psychological and physical struggles of escaping North Korea and her past.

            Some people have criticized Yeonmi for inconsistencies in her accounts to the media. Some of these inconsistencies are as minor as statements that her mom had a Chanel handbag while in North Korea, but some are more significant, such as her claim that she saw dead bodies in a river. A particularly significant inconsistency involves her saying that she witnessed the execution of her friend’s mom when she was nine (in 2002), although there have not been any large scale executions in North Korea since 2000.

As a girl, Yeonmi may have actually believed that her mom had a Chanel handbag and only realized that the handbag was a knockoff when the press pointed out the improbability. In her book, Yeonmi said that the bags were probably knockoffs. As for seeing dead bodies in the river on the way to school, a reporter said that he traveled to North Korea and didn’t see any corpses in the river. That may have been true when the reporter visited, but during her childhood, Yeonmi might have seen a few dead bodies in the river.

The location of the execution and the reason for it have also been inconsistent, but Yeonmi has been through hardships that hardly anyone has experienced, which could have muddled her memory. This execution was not mentioned in the book.

There have been various other inconsistencies, which could be the result of PTSD or she could have just plain forgotten. The point is, Yeonmi has very little reason to lie about her experiences in North Korea. Yeonmi mentions that even though she is in South Korea now, North Korea still watches her.  Merely speaking out puts her safety in danger, and even if an event didn’t happen to her, it may have happened to another defector or another citizen of North Korea. Yeonmi confesses at the end of her book that she can’t hide her past, but instead should use it to bring attention to the atrocities that are happening inside North Korea.