The document summarizes several books: 1) Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro - The novel tells the story of Kathy, a "carer" for clones known as "donors" who are bred to donate organs. Through Kathy's recollections, it's revealed that she and her friends from their boarding school were clones destined for organ donation. 2) Ya-Yas in Bloom by Rebecca Wells - The latest book in the Ya-Ya Sisterhood series focuses on the extended Louisiana family first introduced in prior books. However, the new book lacks the humor and heart of earlier entries in the franchise. 3) Where You're At by Patrick Neate - The

1. By Cynthia Wong
Special to The Denver Post
Kathy H. is the 31-year old narrator of Kazuo Ishiguro’s
sixth novel, “Never Let Me Go,” and she is a “carer,” or hos-
pice-type worker for the patients whom she calls “donors.”
Traveling in and around the English countryside to meet
with her charges, Kathy reminisces on what first appears
as a very idyllic childhood with her friends at their be-
loved boarding school, Hailsham.
As details emerge from Kathy’s first-person perspective,
the reader senses that life is not at all filled with the happi-
ness evoked by her fabled childhood. Ishiguro leads the
reader into the despairing discoveries that Kathy herself
slowly unravels from the dark corridors of her memory.
The author of the Booker Prize-winning novel, “The Re-
mains of the Day,” first seduced readers in the quietly dev-
astating novels, “A Pale View of Hills” and “An Artist of
the Floating World,” with tales of a reconstructed Japan or
Britain told by aging characters who
struggled to live dignified lives shaped
from the ruins of their past.
Unreliable narrators continued to ap-
pear in Ishiguro’s subsequent novels.
These novels featured disoriented fig-
ures who, at the summit of their profes-
sional careers in “The Unconsoled” and
“When We Were Orphans,” are founder-
ing in their private lives.
In each of Ishiguro’s self-enclosed fic-
tional worlds, his characters struggle si-
lently. Unable to suppress the advent of
a potential disaster, they talk themselves
into more palatable portraits of what
their lives once were and may yet be-
come. It is the solemn eloquence of their
voice and their will to reflect that have
the power to transport readers into their deluded con-
sciousness.
Past Kathy’s pleasant recounting of how guardians at the
school cherished them and their artistic endeavors, the
reader detects progressively more alarming details about
the life programmed for the students.
As pre-adolescents, the students’ queries are diverted by
guardians who seem determined to steer them in specific
ways. After their formal schooling is over, the students
move on to live at the “cottages,” where they indulge in
sexual experimentation and any creative impulses. Then,
they go on to become donors and inhabit hospitals and re-
habilitation facilities for the remainder of their brief lives.
Ishiguro’s euphemisms control the flow of information
given to the reader. Because Kathy uses these terms in the
manner of her socialization at Hailsham, their implications
are known to her but not the readers.
As more references trickle into familiar but peculiar
terms, such as “possibles,” “donations program,” “deferral”
or “completion,” the reader learns that each of the stu-
dents is a clone, genetically engineered to grow into adults
who will donate organs for science.
Each first becomes a “carer” assisting other “donors” to
“completion,” or death, and then becomes a donor to face
the same end. Any desires they may have had to lead a dif-
ferent life are thwarted and irrelevant to this fate.
Set in contemporary England in the late 1990s, the stu-
dents are privy to similar desires as their “normal” counter-
parts. In this alternative world, they seek to own material
things but must choose among the junk offered them at
> See ISHIGURO on 13F
Out of one,
Clones lead their
own lives until they’re
needed for spare parts
many
By John Freeman
Special to The Denver Post
Several years ago, British novelist
Patrick Neate stumbled into a Tokyo
dance club called Harlem, where up was
down and down was up. African men pos-
ing as black Americans were dancing with
Japanese girls who’d tanned their skin the
color of charcoal. It goes without saying
that the music they were
listening to was Ameri-
can hip-hop.
As Neate discovers in
“Where You’re At,” hip-
hop often leads to cultur-
al cross-dressing. Neate
should know. A white
Londoner who studied at
Cambridge University
and learned to DJ in Afri-
ca, Neate is an example
of why authenticity is a
slippery term in the
hip-hop world.
Neate finds all kinds of
definitions for what hip-
hop truly is in “Where
You’re At,” which chroni-
cles his travels to Tokyo,
Rio, New York, Johannes-
burg and Cape Town, talking to MCs
named Herb and bopping his head to
South African bubblegum (early ’90s disco
pop). Like it or not, hip-hop is one of Amer-
ica’s bestselling music genres, and here is
a book that shows what the world has
done with America’s flashiest export.
Like any expert in a marginalized genre
that’s gone mainstream, Neate has a hard
time giving a simple introduction. He’s for-
ever clocking how five minutes ago a
scene is or measuring its purity with a
gemologist’s precision. But Neate knows
his stuff. He has a firm grasp of hip-hop’s
evolution from the break beat all the way
up to Eminem.
But his knowledge turns positively deli-
cious where cultures cross over. Rather
than describe, Neate shows us. He visits a
record label in Manhattan called Bronx Sci-
ence, which ships most of its music to
white Europeans overseas. He tests the
pulse of old-time gangsters in South Afri-
ca, who signify by wearing Chuck Taylor
> See HIP-HOP on 13F
By Robin Vidimos
Special to The Denver Post
“The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sister-
hood” (1996) didn’t hit the best-seller lists
when it was first published. It took a couple
of years for word of Rebecca Wells’ celebra-
tion of women’s friendships to filter
through the reading community, friend-to-
friend and from one book group to the next.
By the time the almost universally panned
movie appeared in 2002, the “Ya-Yas” were
close to a household word.
Readers wanting more
of the uninhibited adven-
tures of the extended Loui-
siana clan turned to
Wells’ first book, “Little
Altars Everywhere”
(1992), into a best seller.
The same will undoubted-
ly happen with the newest
collection of tales,
“Ya-Yas in Bloom.” It’s
too bad this latest collec-
tion of tales is a pale imita-
tion of earlier material.
For those unfamiliar
with the franchise, the sto-
ries center on and radiate
out from Vivi Abbott
Walker. Some would de-
scribe her as flamboyant, or perhaps just a
woman passionately embracing life. Others
would call her self-centered, with alcohol fu-
eling behavior listing toward crazy. Every-
one would be right.
As a girl in bayou country, Vivi estab-
lished a bond with three friends: Teensy,
Necie and Caro. The Ya-Ya stories are the
histories of these friends as girls, as wives
and as mothers. As the original circle age,
their tales reach beyond the original quartet
to their kids, the Petites Ya-Yas. With
“Ya-Yas in Bloom” a third generation, the
Très Petites, enter the stage.
Stage is an appropriate metaphor for the
flavor of the stories, and a good part of
what has made them such fun is that they
blend outrageous humor with living heart-
> See BLOOM on 13F
FICTION
FICTION
NONFICTION
BOOKS
“Ya-Yas” bloom,
blanched of
previous color
Never Let
Me Go
By Kazuo
Ishiguro
Knopf, 236
pages, $24
Ya-Yas In
Bloom
By Rebecca
Wells
HarperCollins,
272 pages,
$24.95
Brit novelist
has the rap
on hip-hop
American export shapes
culture around the world
Where
You’re At
Notes From the
Frontline of a
Hip-Hop Planet
By Patrick
Neate
Riverhead, 274
pages, $14
Andrew Lucas Denver Post illustration
Sunday, April 10, 2005 g The Denver Post 11F