The Horror of Good Intentions

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, stands out as a "classic instance of a story that's
horrifying," Ramsey Campbell explains, "precisely because the narrator doesn’t think
it is." Rachel Cusk makes the same point when, reversing a famous phrase, she describes
the novel’s effect as based on "the evil of banality."

Yet other readers, perhaps deceived by the
complacent complicity of the narrator and
other victims in this book, don’t even see it
as a horror tale. They have some justification
is classifying it as a bildungsroman, or a
philosophical novel—an exemplar of what
John Gardner was calling for in his quasi-
manifesto On Moral Fiction—or even a love
story, built on that time-honored plot device,
the romantic triangle.

Ishiguro earns our praise by crafting a lucid
narrative that achieves all of these goals, yet
without ostentation or any sense of tension
between the different layers to his story. As I read Never Let Me Go, I marveled at the
paradoxical nature of Ishiguro's achievement: the story wears a mask of blandness, yet
I found the book a compelling 'page-turner'. In the realm of horror fiction, where so
many of the leading figures in the field reach for success through excess, where taste
and restraint are often tossed aside within the first ten pages and plot development
proceeds as a kind of Bataan death march, Ishiguro’s skill stands out all the more.

Yet I avoided reading this novel for many years. And the author is to blame for my
hesitancy. When Never Let Me Go was released Ishiguro gave away 'spoilers' in his
interviews—or at least, I thought they were spoilers. He explained that his book was
about a group of youngsters who lived in a boarding school, but their teachers weren't
preparing them for careers. Instead, the ‘students’ would eventually supply organs for
harvesting.

I naively assumed that I now knew the surprise ending
of Never Let Me Go, and this would prevent me from
savoring the suspense and mystery in the book. How
wrong I was! In fact, everyone involved, including the
students at Hailsham school, are aware from the outset
that the endpoint for these children is a series of 'donations'.
Yet Ishiguro still withholds crucial information—indeed,
one of the most impressive aspects of this novel is the
skill with which our author reveals so many details, while
keeping others under wraps until the proper moment. He
draws on a wide range of devices to achieve this, including
huge leaps in narrative chronology, foreshadowing,
flashbacks, symbols, false hypotheses shared by the
characters, various red herring clues, and other methods
of what magicians call 'misdirection'. Yet the whole
narrative proceeds with such guileless ease—presented
as a kind of diary of one of the students—that readers can
easily miss the virtuosity demonstrated by our author again
and again in these pages.

The surface story is simple enough. Our narrator Kathy relates her time at Hailsham,
and focuses on her relationships with two classmates, her bossy friend Ruth and the
loner boy Tommy. Occasionally other characters step briefly into the forefront of the
tale, most notably the Guardians who fill the role of teachers at Hailsham. The reader
quickly picks up on the creepy ambience at the school, but only gradually comes to
notice the most unusual aspect of this suspense novel. Put simply, there is no apparent
enemy here, no monster or slasher, no ghost or criminal, no vampire or zombie, nothing
that goes bump in the night. Everybody has the best of intentions—or so it seems.

The mysteries presented in these pages are such tiny ones. Why does a woman show
up every few weeks to scrutinize the youngsters’ artwork, and take away the best items
for her 'gallery'? Why did one of the Guardians make that enigmatic statement in class,
complaining that the students "had been told and not told" about their future? Why was
she fired a few days later? And what about rumors that some students can get deferrals
provided that they meet certain unspecified criteria?

As I look back at this novel, which I found filled with an almost unbearable tension even
in scenes that are superficially free of conflict, I’m convinced that this pervasive tranquility
is actually the key ingredient in Ishiguro’s success. Has anyone ever written a horror
novel in which everyone is smiling and compassionate? You might assume that such a
path to terror is a dead end road, but when actually confronted with a story of this sort,
you may find it so unsettling that you even consider putting this book aside. Wouldn't it
be better not to learn too much about the donations? Ah, you will keep reading….because
you, too, will have had your compassion aroused, and will care deeply for our three
main characters. Ishiguro has caught you in his web.

What makes it all the worse (or perhaps better, from a purely literary standpoint) is that
this is one of the most plausible dystopian novels you will ever read. Hardly a week goes
by without some news story about genetic modifications and altered life forms going viral
on the web. While I was reading Never Let Me Go, the press was breathlessly describing
a successful new program to 'grow' human organs inside pigs. This raises the obvious
question: what if you could save more lives by growing human organs in humans?

This isn't the place to explore the ethical issues raised
by genetic research. I will simply point out that our
technology is advancing faster than our moral wisdom
as a species, and that the shallow utilitarianism that seems
to guide our scientists' actions in the current day—overheated
Jeremy Bentham mixed in with a dose of Auguste Comte's
positivism—will very likely take us to some strange and ugly
endpoints. We are trying to set rules for 21st century advanced
research with an unreconstructed 19th century ethical
philosophy. But I hardly need to prod you to think about these
matters. Ishiguro's book will do that much better than anything
I could say.

And that’s real horror. This is why the compassion of the Guardians and others in the
book is so bloody disturbing. Of all the terrible things done in the last hundred years,
the very worst were perpetrated by idealists with lofty goals for human improvement.
They just wanted to help. We need horror novels with 'villains' of that sort—not just
because they are the scariest evil-doers of them, but also because it may help us to
recognize them when they next show up in our midst. Then again, maybe they already
have.

Ted Gioia writes about music, literature and popular culture. His latest book is How to Listen to Jazz from
Basic Books.

Publication Date: October 5, 2016

This is my year of horrible reading.
I am reading the classics of horror fiction
during the course of 2016, and each week will
write about a significant work in the genre.
You are invited to join me in my annus
horribilis. During the course of the year—if
we survive—we will have tackled zombies,
serial killers, ghosts, demons, vampires, and
monsters of all denominations. Check back
each week for a new title...but remember to
bring along garlic, silver bullets and a
protective amulet. Ted Gioia

My Year of Horrible Reading

Week 1:
Dracula
By Bram Stoker

Week 2:
T he Haunting of Hill House
By Shirley Jackson

Week 3:
T ales of Mystery & Imagination
By Edgar Allan Poe

Week 4:
Carrie
By Stephen King

Week 5:
The Passion According to G.H.
By Clarice Lispector

Week 6:
T ales
By H.P. Lovecraft

Week 7:
T he Exorcist
By William Peter Blatty

Week 8:
The Woman in Black
By Susan Hill

Week 9:
N ausea
By Jean-Paul Sartre

Week 10:
I Am Legend
By Richard Matheson

Week 11:
G host Stories of Henry James
By Henry James

Week 12:
Interview with the Vampire
By Anne Rice

Week 13:
A merican Psycho
By Bret Easton Ellis

Week 14:
L ast Stories and Other Stories
By William T. Vollmann

Week 15:
G host Stories of an Antiquary
By M.R. James

Week 16:
R osemary's Baby
By Ira Levin

Week 17:
T he King in Yellow
By Robert W. Chambers

Week 18:
Rebecca
By Daphne Du Maurier

Week 19
The Woman in the Dunes
by Kōbō Abe

Week 20
The Dark Eidolon
by Clark Ashton Smith

Week 21
O ff Season
by Jack Ketchum

Week 22
B ooks of Blood, Vols. 1-3
by Clive Barker

Week 23
The Silence of the Lambs
by Thomas Harris

Week 24
T he Orange Eats Creeps
by Grace Krilanovich

Week 25
S trange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Week 26
P sycho
by Robert Bloch

Week 27
F ledgling
by Octavia E. Butler

Week 28
D emons by Daylight
by Ramsey Campbell

Week 29
T he Complete Short Stories
by Ambrose Bierce

Week 30
P et Sematary
by Stephen King

Week 31
O ur Lady of Darkness
by Fritz Leiber

Week 32
G rendel
by John Gardner

Week 33
W hite is for Witching
by Helen Oyeyemi

Week 34
T he Wasp Factory
by Iain Banks

Week 35
K ing Kong
by Edgar Wallace

Week 36
T he Castle of Otranto
by Horace Walpole

Week 37
The J ohn Silence Stories
by Algernon Blackwood

Week 38
The M agic Toyshop
by Angela Carter

Week 39
The O ther
by Thomas Tryon

Week 40
N ever Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro