Barren Bitches Book Tour 17 Barren: Never Let Me Go

This Tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigrade had us read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I think I should warn you that this post could reveal info about the book that may spoil the surprise. Or maybe it will intrigue you further into reading the book. Who knows. But if you don't want the spoilers, stop reading now...



"One thing that struck me while reading the book is that the characters seem very passive. Although certain knowledge is withheld from them along the way, and they do have questions, they do not really rebel or protest their fate, or try to escape. They seem quite accepting of the future that has been laid out for them. Why do you think this is so?"


I think part of this is the fact that they don't have all the information. After all, they are children and then adolescents who are growing up in a sheltered environment. They are in the care of Guardians whom they trust implicitly. I don't know about anyone else, but as a child, I may have been curious about the world around me, but my life was my life. I never considered that it could be something different than it already was.


But I don't think that they never rebelled or protested. I think of Ruth and their expedition to seek out her Possible. Ruth did dream of a life that was different and even went so far as to see if it was somehting she may have been destined for. The fact that she didn't pursue it later doesn't negate the fact that the impulse was there in the first place.



If you knew with certainty that you had a child with a shortened life expectancy, would you raise the child any differently? For example, are there certain experiences you'd want to ensure that they had? Are there things that you wouldn't bother to make them do (flossing? eat healthy foods? go to school?) since they wouldn't have the same long-term impact as they would for other children? Would it make a difference in your parenting if you knew exactly at what age the child was expected to die as opposed to a general sense of foreshortened lifespan?

What a difficult question! The truth is, I don't know. I don't think that this is something you could really wrap your mind around or figure out unless you were actually in this position. At this point for me, I can barely wrap my mind around the fact that I'll have a child, let a lone how long that child's life could be. I think about my parents raising a child with cancer and I wonder how they might have grappled with this question. They didn't know until much later on that he for sure wouldn't make it. But there must have been the reality all the way along. I don't think they raised him any differently than they did us.

Would knowing when help? Maybe. Maybe it would help you to help your child make the most of the time they had. Or, maybe it would instill fear and/or panic, which would make those last days/ weeks/ months almost unbearable.

If you were a student a Hailsham, would you have wanted to know your ultimate destiny as a Donor? Why or why not? How do you think knowing at that point in your life would have affected you? Does this desire to know your outcome apply to your own real life? In what situations do you find knowledge helpful? At what times can it be detrimental?

This was my question. In many ways, it's the flip of the previous question I answered. But I find it easier. Answering whether you would want to know your fate or not at that age has a lot to do with your beliefs. Are you a person who believes in self-determination or do you believe in an ultimate Fate? For myself, I believe that I am meant to go through certain things in my life and achieve a certain outcome. How I get there and in what condition is completely up to me. I am a person who seeks knowledge. I like having info as it helps me make sense of an often confusing world. However, I do think knowing that kind of information at such a young age that your life would be shorter than most could be a little detrimental. There's a small period in our lives of innocence, it would a shame to see it grow even shorter.

Now hop a long here and check out what others had to say about this interesting and poignant book.

Barren Bitches Book Brigade: Tour Sixteen

So it's my first sojourn into the Barren Bitches Book Club.

The current tour had us read An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken. The story is a memoir recounting the still birth of her first son and the journey through to the birth of her second son. It is a gripping and touching book, ever so gently weaving back and forth in time. It spoke to me deeply. I get this book because we have both lost children. There were moments when I had to put it down becuase it was too much, but I was so engrossed in it, I would quickly pick it back up again and keep reading. It took me only a few days reading at night to make my way through her story. Her writing style is so open and honest and yet you can feel that she could be possibly holding things back. But who that has lost a child doens't hold a few remaining cards close to their chest?

Our task is to answer three questions from the list we all created. After you’ve read my answers, hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at Stirrup Queens (http://stirrup-queens.blogspot.com/). You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I’m in, are you?

On page 13, McCracken writes, "I want a book that acknowledges that life goes on, but that death goes on, too, that a person who is dead is a long, long story. You move on from it, but the death will never disappear from view. Your friends may say, Time heals all wounds. No, it doesn't, but eventually you'll feel better. You'll be yourself again. Your child will still be dead." Do you agree with the idea that those that have died continue on? Have you ever found that Time could actually change your perception of death? If you haven't experienced the death of a child (or even if you have), how might this translate into other areas of your life? (ie. infertility, adoption, loss of other family members, etc).

I used to think that death was this final thing, that once the person was gone, you had your memories, but that was it. That was before I lost people in my life. I first experienced this with my brother when I was 10. I found that as the years crept along he was still present in my mind and in my life. This became so much more evident with the loss of my two babies. They have names. They lived, if only for a brief time. But they are still here. They exist because they died. They will always have died. And so they will have always live.


Most people outside of the ALI community seem to distinguish between pregnancy loss in each trimester. When I was reading this book I kept running through my head about my miscarriage, how I felt quite similar to what Elizabeth McCracken described often enough. It still reached me, even though I lost my little one so much earlier in the pregnancy. If you have had a miscarriage, rather than a stillbirth, did this book still resonate with you? Or could you not relate at all to the loss that she experiences?

Did it resonate with me? Oh yes! The feelings of loss, the overwhelming grief is not limited to stillbirth. All loss hurts. I find it frustrating that others outside our community would draw these distinctions. As if the trimester you were in determines the level of pain you should feel over your loss. I think that’s why the ALI community has such an amazing power to heal. We all are hurting in one way or another. Elizabeth’s book breaks open the boundaries and allows anyone to understand the ways and means of grief.

My favourite line of the book comes on page 103: "Closure is bullshit." In your opinion (whether or not you have experienced pregnancy loss yourself), is this true or false?

True. Although it could easily be different for different people, for me, closure is bullshit. If it wasn’t, I could move on with my life; but as I said earlier, my two babies have lives because they died. How can one have closure over that? In my mind, closure is for those who no longer want to feel the pain. But as strange as it sounds the pain is comforting. It reminds me that I was a mother, however briefly, and that I loved my babies. That love is really all I have of them. If I give them up by feeling closure, what happens to them? I need the love, I don’t need closure. It isn’t real.

Can’t wait to hear what everyone else thought about this lovely little treasure of a book and to get some interesting discussions going. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. Yes it’s a book about the death of a baby, but truly, it is so much more…