Ryan

While originally written in 2016 by Japanese author Hiromi Kawakami, Under the Eye of the Big Bird hit western shelves in 2024. But despite that, the book feels almost like it was written for 2024, in a time when climate change is causing real-time changes, fascism is on the rise, and humanity is still recovering from a global pandemic.

While the book doesn't speak on these issues specifically, it focuses on the thing we fear most as a result of them:

“What happens when we go extinct?”

Told over the course of 14 interconnected stories about humans on the verge of extinction, I found myself a little confused and skeptical in the first 2–3 stories as I was thrown into a world set hundreds of years from now. But as more was revealed to me, confusion was replaced with a very specific sadness that is summed up perfectly in the penultimate story, through the eyes of an AI character:

“You often talk about feeling lonely. I'm unable to experience that emotion, but I do have the ability to internally simulate an analogous response. For some reason, that is the response that arises whenever I tell your story. It's not something I can explain. It never happens when I talk about other things.”

But this book is more than just an act of doomscrolling in book form, and that's what makes it so refreshing.

Instead, the final chapter caught me by surprise, leaving me in tears as our tale ends not on a note of despair, but one of hope. Kawakami ends her book with a brave tale of how, even at the lowest point of human history, there is still the possibility to face the abyss and ask:
“Is this really the end?”

A wonderfully different book with a refreshing plot. You can tell it's a young adult book as it's fairly simple, but there's nothing wrong with that as the story is still well-told. I wish I got to learn a little more about Thandi, one of the characters we first meet, but otherwise I really liked how this book put a fun spin on the afterlife.

While these short stories surrounding the Vietnam War are fictional, Tim O'Brien's previous experience as a soldier makes them feel real. And that's part of the point of the book; in the short story “How to Tell a True War Story”, O'Brien explores verisimilitude, or how something can both be fiction but seem true:

“In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way... ...The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.”

seems

“What stories can do, I guess, is make things present. I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again.”

A great look into what good self-talk looks like while you're out running and how a positive attitude can make all the difference.

Hailsham seems like a normal English board school, but as details are revealed through the eyes of Kathy H., a former student there, we come to learn there's more to it than at first glance.

At thirty-one years old, Kathy, who has been a carer for 11 years, begins our story by boasting about how most of the donors she's overseen have done well but that she is also looking forward to being a donor soon herself.

While this is all revealed in the first few pages and gives away a lot of what is going to happen in the book, it doesn't ruin the suspense found in the pages inside. That's because Ishiguro instead chooses to focus on the journey and the relationships between Kathy and her two old friends and classmates from Hailsham, Tommy and Ruth.
Told over three parts, we learn about the history of Hailsham, what lays beyond that realm, and the true “outside” world everybody from Hailsham has to face, whether they like it or not.

Throughout the book is a big theme of trying to hold on to something for as long as possible – go figure for a book called Never Let Me Go. It's a simple theme when distilled to its core, but Ishiguro still manages to get your heartstrings with his masterful writing – though I will admit there is a time or two where it feels like we get off into the weeds a bit.

To me, the most memorable part comes about a quarter of the way in the book, when Kathy is describing a tape she got and what it means to her:

“What made the tape so special for me was this one particular song: track number three, “Never Let Me Go”

It's slow and late night and American, and there's a bit that keeps coming round when Judy sings: “Never let me go. baby, baby Oh Never let me go...” I was eleven then, and hadn't listened to much music, but this one song, it really got to me. I always tried to keep the tape wound to just that spot so I could play the song whenever a chance came by...

...What was so special about this song? Well, the thing was, I didn't used to listen properly to the words; I just waited for that bit that went: “Baby, baby, never let me go...” And what I'd imagine was a woman who'd been told she couldn't have babies, who'd really, really wanted them all her life. Then there's a sort of miracle and she has a baby, and she holds this baby very close to her and walks around singing: “Baby, never let me go...” partly because she's so happy, but also because she's so afraid something will happen, that the baby will get ill or be taken away from her. Even at the time, I realised this couldn't be right, that this interpretation didn't fit with the rest of the lyrics. But that wasn't an issue with me. The song was about what I said, and I used to listen to it again and again, on my own, whenever I got the chance.”

As you can tell from this passage, there's fear about good things being taken away without warning. And this feeling of fear permeates throughout the whole book, making for a somber and heartbreaking read.

But amongst the fear is also a sense of accepting, producing an interesting combination that feels relatable in a world full of scary things just waiting to happen. It's an important reminder that, while things have the potential to be lost, it's important to remember the good times, to count our blessings for what we have now, and to enjoy the present moment.