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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nellisir" data-source="post: 6199939" data-attributes="member: 70">Well, yes.  That's what I've been saying.  I'm cool with that. I love discussing opinions.  And I'll give you this; it's rapidly climbing my list of books to reread, just to reevaluate it.  Maybe even this weekend.I've seen it hailed much more frequently as a cautionary tale of environmental awareness, climate change, and so forth.  Given the premises of the novel (I won't give spoilers, but it's much more than simple nuclear or chemical warfare), I find it, as I said, heavy-handed in that regard.As a love story, it's...well, yes, the boy survives until the end of the book. Given the setting (and how you can disentangle the setting from the story is somewhat beyond me; I'm pretty sure the story wouldn't be the same if it were set in 1950's Kansas City), I'm not sure that's what I'd call an act of love as much as blind persistence. He's saved, but for how long and to what end? Or is it enough that he's saved; his future doesn't matter? That was unsatisfying.  The setting might not be the plot, but the setting is part of the story.  There are words on page devoted to the setting, and Cormac McCarthy doesn't seem to go for a lot of extra verbiage, so I assume those words have meaning.I'm sure there are allegorical layers to the story that I haven't accessed.  Maybe the cliched post-apocalyptic cannibals represent our narcissistic culture devouring itself, and the baby-eaters are the Baby Boomers; regardless, the book didn't draw me in enough to make me want to tease those things out.Both The Road and Never Let Me Go are described by at least one reviewer in each case as works of horror.  (Michael Chabon for The Road; Ramsey Campbell for Never Let Me Go; I suppose that one goes to The Road.  I love Chabon.) The Road is horrific but frankly, unlikely, and that diminishes it as horror and as morality.  As a father and a person I can empathize with "the man" - he does what I would do, and there aren't really any surprises in their relationship that I recall (ergo, if there were, they weren't memorable).  Never Let Me Go is horrifying because it isn't unlikely.  It's familiar. It's the discovery of terrifying truths right under your nose, in your house, and with the final twist of the protagonist not going along as the reader would/does.  I wanted to punch the book in the end. It creeps me out.Never Let Me Go did make Time magazine's list of 100 Best Books of the Past 100 Years, and was named Book of the Year 2005 by Time.  Since the author is British, it was not eligible for the Pulitzer. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize (which Kazuo Ishiguro also won in 1989 for Remains of the Day), the National Book Critics Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award.If & when I do reread it, I'll post in the book thread, not the movie thread.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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