Tito Bailoteos Bailoteos itibaren San José, Paz de Ariporo, Casanare, Kolombiya
This is a story set in 1980's England and is told by a thirty-one year old woman named Kathy. She tells of her childhood in a boarding school and the friends and fellow students she has there. Ishiguro sets the story in the English countryside and through the book we go on car rides to small towns and through woods and down a long road by the seaside. We are privileged to have a position inside the thinking and feelings of Kathy as she relates her childhood being taught and controlled by guardians. All of these people have a heavy influence on the perception of life by Kathy and her friends at Hailsham which is their first home. Slowly, she and others are becoming aware of their purpose in life as carers and donors and most of the truth is left for them to sort out. There are two peers who become important to her: Tommy and Ruth. This story has had a profound impact on my thinking and feelings and I have isolated some things that Ishiguro used to produce this effect. First, because of its setting, it reminds me of pleasant and quite harmless stories of England so in that sense it lures me in. Second, I became so taken in by the voice of Kathy who shares her inner thoughts so completely. What finally makes the true purpose of the plan in this book is that all the older people have accepted that this must become an accepted way of life. This to me is really no different from our justification of war today. We persist in our acceptance of having a group of people sacrifice their lives for the rest of us and our freedom. Since Vietnam, our government "sanitizes" their deaths by denying access to the reality of the deaths. So the plan in this book seems a logical next step. In these constructs by Ishiguro and our current world morality of accepting the sacrifice of another person's life for mine, this became for me a very sad read. Isiguro's writing skill is great. Most everyone should read this book and discuss it with others. I will be doing that.
This story was written in 1970 in Mexico by Ecuadorian Malta. It is written in authentic `magical-realism' style a la `100 Years of Solitude'. It is based in a fictional Latin-American town Santoronton, on the banks of a river and small island `Bahumba'; it's not clear when or which country this really is, though Zinc roofs suggest it is at least mid-1900s. Santoronton is ostensively a normal rural town well populated by the usual suspects of such places: Colonel Candelerion (crocodile) the villainous rapist/murderer leader, witch doctor Bulu-Bulu (monkey) with daughter Dominga, Catholic Father Candido (with personal live wooden Jesus), families including the Quindales with daughters Chepa (a ghost) and Clotilde (bat), Dr Juvenico, secondary baddy bandit Chalena (toad). The town however has the story but also the magic to overlap events and personal animal similes (as indicated in brackets). The `real' animals appear to participate in the story. The basic arc of the story is that the Colonel lusts after Chepa, he murders the family and rapes both daughters: Chepa (marries quickly but dies soon after) comes back to haunt him, what can he do?. The town is the centre of devil (`X-tail') activity with Chalena, who sold his soul?, controlling the water supply and ends up owning the town and people. The town rely on their religion Candido loses his church in a fire and the burned Crucifix comes alive; another Father comes to build a concrete church and falls in with the baddies. Candelerion is Candido's godson (if not son?). Clotide starts to entice men and castrate them, what can doctor Juvenico do to help her? Dominga needs a man to protect her from the tin-tins. You might have been looking for another `100 Years' style of book - this is that book. The story is engaging and enthralling; add in the author's clear magical style which works very well because it's always there but not in an overpowering way - one can simply read the story as magical or preferably (form my point of view) clever analogy that expands events i.e. does the Colonel really turn into a crocodile and kill people so easily? . Assuming you're into Latin American books you will not regret finding and reading this book.