I finally finished reading this book yesterday at 1.30am after hanging on to it in between the past few months. There were only a couple of chapters left and I felt overwhelmingly compelled to read it till the end. After being swooned by the title initially and how I ‘fought’ my way to obtain one of the last copies that were on sale, I had to finish this book!
The story is told in flashbacks by the protagonist, Kathy H. reflecting back to the times when she was a student at Hailsham, a boarding school for unique students right up to the time when she became a carer for organ donors. The plot unfolds rather slowly and the reader is kept guessing all the time. The author sure knows how to tantalise the reader with a dangling carrot. I feel so emotionally manipulated. :P It’s actually quite tiring at times because you know and you don’t quite know what’s happening at the same time. The flashbacks can be quite a tedious read. I kept having these questions running around in my head: Why does these students only have an initial for a surname? Who are these donors and carers they are discussing among themselves all the time? Why are the students encouraged to be artistic? Why are they continuously reminded that they are special? Why are their guardians exceptionally weirder than their charges? All these are revealed along the way and the central plot is only made known almost towards the end of the book.
The only issue that caught my attention was the delicate collision between science and humanity. We, the intellectual higher beings feel it is ok to pursue our personal selfish exploitations at the expense of another person’s loss. That it is ok to violate the laws of nature in the name of love and perfection.
When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her a breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go. – Madame Poignant read if you have time to kill. I rate it 3 out of 5 stars.