Friday 11 February 2011

Spares

So it's all in the papers about Never Let Me Go (and pouty Keira.) I like Kazuo Ishiguro but I thought this was only so-so - probably because I'd just read a much better book with the same theme by science fiction writer Michael Marshall Smith called Spares, which was much more gory, horrific and disturbing and ten times more moving. And not so bloody English and wistful and polite. Go and read Spares instead, it's much better.

(Though I must admit that, though I really really like Michael Marshall Smith, he has sometimes left me with violently horrible images in my head that I could happily have lived without.)
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8 comments:

  1. Annie11 February 2011 at 23:43

    and with a political resonance at the moment, thinking about it - rich folks keeping 'spares' on farms and battening off them, hmmm...

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  2. Arabella11 February 2011 at 23:59

    "Pouty" - I've always thought she projects her nostrils over her upper jaw. Try it! It's a little bit Kenneth Williams, a little bit Keira.

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  3. Tim F12 February 2011 at 02:03

    I thought the book was OK, but the great thing about KI is the gradual way he reveals the complex, depressing truth. With this one, the truth was a single fact - once you got hold of that, the story was over.

    The film was boring.

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  4. GreatSheElephant12 February 2011 at 09:56

    I didn't enjoy the book and doubt I'll see the film. The premise was haunting but fundamentally it was a book about being at boarding school and that topic still traumatises me nearly 30 years on. It's the main reason I won't read Harry Potter books.

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  5. Annie12 February 2011 at 10:14

    Arabella teeheehee! Visions of Keira shouting "Infamy, infamy, they've all got it infamy."

    Tim, I can imagine. I do like that Andrew Garfield though, he's been fab in everything I've seen him in.

    GSE I didn't know you went to boarding school. Why did you go? Why didn't you like it? (I always thought I'd like boarding school but then I wasn't v happy at home with two warring parents & step-parents.)

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  6. GreatSheElephant12 February 2011 at 14:46

    I went because Dad didn't like having children around. In the holidays I went to language school or similar.

    I was weird, very unpopular and bullied, even by children much younger than me. Memories of taking prep, as we had to as fifth and sixth formers, are the entire reason why I could never be a teacher. I hate children en masse. Hate them.

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  7. Arabella12 February 2011 at 23:10

    GSE, I'd buy that novel.

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  8. GreatSheElephant13 February 2011 at 11:27

    I doubt I'd enjoy writing it.

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