Tenth of December

Tenth of December by George Saunders

Fiction

Saunders’s collection of ten short stories in Tenth of December creatively and hilariously explore the cracks in humanity that are exposed under stress. None of George Saunders’s stories are very pleasant and most don’t even have a happy ending. His characters are pushed through difficult conflicts that test their empathy or devotion to their values. But through these trials the readers get a deeper glimpse at what makes us human, and what Saunders seems to be saying is that humans are naïve romantics. Saunders’s characters are idealists in a society that seems to very rarely reward idealists. Sometimes what the reader sees is reassuring, but most of the time I felt disgusted with either our flaws or how society is set up to dismiss virtue.  

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 Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale  by Margaret Atwood

Fiction

Under the religious military dictatorship, the Republic of Gilead, Offred lives as a Handmaid to serve her Commander (the head male of the household). Women occupy one of five roles in society. Four of the roles available are that of wives, Aunts (teachers), Marthas (maids), and lower-class workers. Pollution and disease has made many of the Commander’s wives sterile which opens up a new position for women in society, as a Handmaid. Handmaids are required by law to have sex with their Commanders once a month in hopes of getting pregnant. The women in the Republic of Gilead are unable to read, write, wear what they want, go outside alone, and they have to obey their Commander. Through a series of flashbacks, Offred tells the story of how the Republic of Gilead slowly came to be as women’s rights were gradually stripped away. Offred laments how passively people accepted their loss of power and didn’t take action until it was too late.