Never Let Me Go

I've re-read The People's Act of Love twice, but it feels like both more and less. This is the book that shook my already quivering soul (for more perfectly justified hyperbole just click here), but I can never quite remember the plot. Each time I read it, I feel more immersed in it, like that's my real life and this life, the one where I'm typing away at a keyboard, is the fantasy. But I cannot tell you the names of the main characters without a quick Google search to jog my memory. 

Does it matter, a part of me pipes up? I'm not writing an essay on it! Well, not exactly...

My point is that I could read The People's Act of Love over and over and make new discoveries every time (like the plot and the characters' names, you quip), like an entomologist in the depths of the Amazon rainforest (you know, assuming we haven't cut or burnt the entire thing down by the time I finally publish this post).

That kind of constant epiphany was what I was expecting when I started re-reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. After all, any first reading of an Ishiguro is the slow (dare I say glacial) unveiling of a mystery that usually kicks off dominoes of existential questions that leave you reeling. In Never Let Me Go, those dominoes begin with the ethics of human cloning and tick on over in neat rows to what makes one human and deserving of human rights. 

So, on my second reading, I was looking forward to the literary equivalent of knowing winks from the author to me, the kind that make me want to be a better writer. But what I got was a novel where I already knew the ending -- which is, yes, stating the obvious -- and where very very little happens, because that's kind of the point, but that made getting to said ending very tedious. 

Perhaps the real issue is Ishiguro Fatigue. I had just finished reading Klara and the Sun, which covers some of the same ground as Never Let Me Go at a similar pace. The narrator of Klara and the Sun is a kind of android known as an AF (Artificial Friend), which as the name suggests is usually purchased as a companion for children. Her otherness allows for plenty of opportunities for reflection on a world both familiar and unfamiliar, but I confess that at points I was bored.

Given that, why return to the scene of, well, not the same crime, but a similar one? I rarely re-read books, there being so many books that I want to read that the list may as well be infinite. But I was looking for the equivalent of a warm duvet on cold rainy night; I was looking for comfort and I was sure I'd find it in Never Let Me Go.

I'm being hard on good ol' Ishiguro. Both Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day are great novels -- the best adjective I can think of is 'haunting'. But I made the mistake of going back to the haunted house in the daylight, when things generally look less fantastical and more ... previously lived in. If you haven't read them, do so. Now. If you already have, Klara and the Sun should be your next read -- but be forewarned: this is a slow stroll rather than a fast-paced adventure.

The Passage versus The Passage

I used to think re-reading books was a literary sin. (Which is not a sulphur-and-brimstone sin, more a Fahrenheit 451 sin, the underworld hazy with the ashes of not just words, but something more physical and dependable than even the pages themselves.)  It was Against the Rules (or My Rules, or just my rules - I'm not sure). How could you waste time re-reading a book when there are so many unread books waiting (patiently) (and not so patiently) for you to breathe life into their characters and give them refuge in your memory?

But then I re-read The People's Act of Love, because I needed to; I started re-reading the Discworld series in order, because I like symmetry (I'm on book 29 of 41) and because they're dependable - even after 20 or 30 years, the satire still rings true and the characters are endearing or despicable for the same reasons; I re-read Special Topics in Calamity Physics because I wanted to re-read Night Film, but I couldn't re-read Pessl's second book without reading her first (right?); and now I am re-reading The Passage trilogy, not because I need to but because I want to.

My housemate and I watched the TV adaptation of The Passage in two sessions of five episodes each (each episode is 40 minutes). (Disclaimer: He slept through the last two.) He hasn't read the books and doesn't plan to - he reads fantasy almost exclusively and doesn't plan to meander into apocalyptic horror. However, he is a fan of vampire-esque movies and series and the associated 'lore' - think everything from Dracula to Buffy to Blade to Dawn of the Dead. This is important because the author (Justin Cronin) plays fast and loose with the vampire mythology. Meaning he scraps most of it.

So I am re-reading the books to see if what I loved about the books was originally in the books or if it was something I imposed onto them. Whether I wanted to love the books so much that I did the author the (dis)service of mutating his characters. I have now finished the first book (The Passage) and am taking a break before I begin the second book, The Twelve.

In the meantime, the news has come out that the network will not be making a second season of The Passage. Because of this, my housemate doesn't plan to watch the final episodes of the series that he slept through - smartly, he doesn't want to invest in something that doesn't have an obvious reward. I wish I had had that attitude before watching the third season of Twin Peaks or of Westworld. Yes, I'm still bitter.

Returning to my point (I seem to have developed a compass since last I addressed you, dear reader), while reading The Passage, I highlighted every description of the vampires to see whether I had conjured up a private vision of Cronin's vampires (which, if you read back in my posts, I found terrifying - and I find few things in this world terrifying, apart from human nature) or whether the special effects department had just gotten it wrong, whether for logistical or financial reasons. Thank you, Kindle, because it means all my highlights are now stored all in one place.

In the TV series, the vampires (the ones we see in the bunker, at least) are your standard-issue vampires: pale, reddish-amberish eyes, veins throbbing in their faces, but otherwise clothes-wearing humans. They can also pass for human, as Shauna Babcock does at the end of the season, and they have the Dracula-esque ability to seduce human beings and get them to do their bidding. Perhaps the reason for these choices is that they're a kind of shorthand - the viewer knows what kind of nasty we're looking at, leaving us mental space to focus on other elements of the plot.

One of the 'virals'

Because the vampires in the book are not standard issue. To start with, they're called 'virals', rather than 'vampires', because (obviously) the transformation is caused by a virus unearthed from a South American forest (where else?). These vampires are humanoid, but more muscled than humans and 'coiled', always ready to strike; they glow and their eyes are orange; they don't speak - they make ticking sounds; they have claws rather than hands, fangs rather than teeth; "the facial features seemed to have been buffed away, smoothed"; and their bodies are completely hairless. They hunt in 'pods' of three each, controlled by a hierarchy of twelve 'original' telepathic vampires (who do retain the Dracula-esque ability to appear in the thoughts of both humans and virals).

As I type the characteristics of these virals out, I realise how difficult it would have been to try to translate that onto the silver screen. Glowing vampires? They sound like a lumpy child's toy. But I still wish the special effects team had tried. By not trying, they were creating just another vampire TV show and we really don't need another one of those.

The relationship between the orphaned Amy Bellafonte and FBI agent Brad Wolgast sustains the first season

In addition to breathing life into a flogged-to-death genre, Cronin's strength as a writer is telling people's stories. The TV series gets this right in its casting and portrayal of the relationship between Federal Agent Bard Wolgast and a young girl named Amy Bellafonte. Wolgast is tasked with retrieving Bellafonte and bringing her to the facility where they can test the virus on her (you know, the one that turns everyone into vampires; yeah, that one) because she's an orphan and no one will miss her (I'm pretty sure there are laws against this, but ok). The writers tasked with translating the story for the silver screen fudge the details a bit, but the developing, sincere father-daughter relationship between the two characters makes this whole season watchable.

Thinking about this has made me realise how long Cronin's books are, how tedious they become in places, and how much better he is at telling people's stories than at navigating plot. The relationship between Wolgast and Bellafonte being one example. Another example is the story of Anthony Carter, who becomes one of the original virals and whose story binds the books together. The Passage alone is 760 pages long and it's only the first of three books. It covers the beginning of the outbreak, a time jump of 100 years, and a group of character's journey halfway across America, which could easily have been portioned out into two books. I'd ask: "What's left to tell?" except that I've already read the other two books, so I know the answer.

I am conflicted that there's no second season of The Passage. It would have picked up 100 years in the future (so, halfway through the first book) at a small outpost community that has lost all contact with the outside world (which, from its perspective and in typical American fashion, may no longer exist). The trailer depicts Amy as a kind of post-apocalyptic warrior princess, rather than a girl trying to survive the apocalypse, which is how she's depicted in the books and which I suppose is less appealing. If another network picks up this series, here's my compromise: I'll let you get away with warrior Amy (as opposed to survivor Amy) if I get my glowing, smooth, coiled, ticking virals.