The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge: a Sherlock Holmes short story

"The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge” is a Sherlock Holmes short story from The Sherlock Holmes collection His Last Bow. According to The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, it was Holmes’ 28th case chronologically.

A respectable British gentleman, Mr. Eccles, employs Holmes to discover the meaning of an unusual encounter. Eccles was visiting the home of a new acquaintance and as arranged in advance spent the night. In the morning the house was abandoned without a trace by the master and all servants. Shortly after Eccles begins to recount the evening, the police arrive to question him. His acquaintance was found dead that morning and a note on the deceased revealed the previous evening’s plans, leading them to Holmes’ client.

From there, the police follow one theory, while Holmes follows his own. In spite of this divergence, Holmes notes, with rare admiration, the powers of observation of Inspector Baynes, a new Holmes character.

 

And for once, the police are not utterly inept. Baynes is surreptitiously on the same scent as Holmes, but uses a false public investigation as misdirection to lull the real culprit into a false sense of security.

 

And the game is afoot.

 

Dr. Watson is not very enthusiastic about the case.

But there was something in the ice-cold reasoning of Holmes which made it impossible to shrink from any adventure which he might recommend. One knew that thus, and only thus, could a solution be found. I clasped his hand in silence, and the die was cast. 

And for those of you counting, that makes two allusions to Shakespeare! 

 

It is a fun adventure with creepy specters, bizarre clues, and still more misdirection. And as I’ve hinted, a very rare occurrence in the Sherlock Holmes canon: a police detective very nearly the equal of the great Sherlock Holmes.

 

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The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen (novel #247)

Arthur Machen’s novella The Great God Pan (1894) is set in England and Wales at the turn of the 19th century. It is commonly categorized as horror. I would add sci-fi and fantasy.

It opens in the laboratory of the mad scientist, Dr. Raymond, though some might say I’m being unfair. I don’t believe Machen intended to portray him as absolutely mad, just a bit obsessed. Dr. Raymond intends lift the veil between the physical world and the spiritual, an occurrence the ancients called “seeing the god Pan”. No problem thus far, but it is Raymond’s method that condemns him. He will perform brain surgery on a young woman, a sort of lobotomy, that he is absolutely convinced will allow the subject to witness the spiritual realm. He claims it is completely safe, and that…

I rescued Mary from the gutter, and from almost certain starvation, when she was a child; I think her life is mine, to use as I see fit.

Mad says I. He reminds me of Dr. Frankenstein.

Mary does not come through the operation unharmed. Dr. Raymond calmly observes…

…it is a great pity; she is a hopeless idiot. However, it could not be helped; and after all, she has seen the Great God Pan.

In other words, not a total loss.

Mad!

By the way, he has not one bit of evidence that his conclusion is fact…he just knows it 

Ugh!

And indeed it did lift the veil briefly. Raymond’s reckless experiment unleashes an unholy terror on the world, setting the stage for the bulk of the tale. The entity’s terrifying menace on humanity and the suspenseful pursuit by investigators are compelling, but the story stumbles at the start and is ridiculous in the end. Such an opinion begs justification; be warned:

SPOILER ALERT

Just the high points: two amateur sleuths track down the otherworldly menace and threaten to call the police unless it hangs itself. Yes, a supernatural being with mind-bending powers commits suicide out of fear of the cops.

Ugh!

My rating 2.5 of 5 stars

 

This novel fulfills the “Deity” category for the What’s in a Name? 2025 challenge, as the title features deity.

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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré (novel #246)

Smiley feared…the secret fear that follows every professional to his grave. Namely, that one day, out of a past so complex that he himself could not remember all the enemies he might have made, one of them would find him and demand the reckoning.

 

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a gripping tale of espionage set within the British intelligence apparatus during the Cold War of the 1970s. George Smiley, the recurring protagonist of John le Carré’s spy novels, is recalled from forced retirement to uncover a “mole” in MI6, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, affectionately known as the Circus.

 

This dizzying saga brims with duplicitous characters, esoteric jargon, clandestine encounters, and treacherous relationships. Smiley must discover facts buried in the memories or encrypted records of master spies, each uniquely trained in the art of deception.

 

I initially called this a tale of espionage, but as a word-nerd and former member of the American intelligence community, I must clarify: it’s more precisely a tale of counterespionage—efforts to thwart espionage. This is Smiley’s fearful mission.

 

He feared…

…the secret fear that follows every professional to his grave. Namely, that one day, out of a past so complex that he himself could not remember all the enemies he might have made, one of them would find him and demand the reckoning.

The novel immerses readers in an uncomfortable world of deception, loyalty, betrayal, ambition, ego, and paranoia—or perhaps justified suspicion. The suspicion centers on one of five top Circus officials, codenamed Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Poor Man, and Beggarman. Smiley himself, once a suspect, was Beggarman.

 

This is a fascinating read, though it may challenge some readers. The large cast of characters can be confusing. Additionally, the British intelligence jargon is unfamiliar. I inferred some meanings, but others required a jargon guide from the novel’s Wikipedia article. Unlike typical spy novels, Tinker, Tailor isn’t action packed and Smiley is no action hero. Instead he wields his wits and decades of experience in a profession half spent concealing truth and half spent discovering it. It’s not quite a psychological thriller or suspense novel but rather a work of cerebral suspense—My occupational hazard.

 

My rating 4 of 5 stars

 

 

 

This novel fulfills the “Alliteration” category for the What’s in a Name? 2025 challenge, as the title features alliteration.

 

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Skellig by David Almond (novel #245)

 

“What are you?” I whispered.

He shrugged again.

“Something,” he said. “Something like you, something like a beast, something like a bird, something like an angel.” He laughed. 

“Something like that.”

Skellig is a young adult novel of magical realism set in Newcastle, England, in the late 1990s. It tells of 10-year-old Michael and his family. Michael has a lot to deal with: a move to a new neighborhood, a seriously dilapidated home, a newborn sister fighting for her life, and the lack of attention his parents can afford him at the moment. Oh, and he discovers Skellig, an otherworldly creature in the garage. 

Both Skellig and the garage appear to be in their final moments.

It's a charming story, probably suitable for children of Michael’s age and older. There is some eerie suspense, but nothing frightening. It is more about faith, wonder, courage, and friendship. Michael manages to make one new friend, independent-minded Mina, who becomes his one confidant regarding Skellig.

 

And Skellig? Well, he has something to offer…perhaps, if he lives long enough to show it

...he [Skellig] reached out and touched Mina's face, then mine.

"But i'm getting strong, thanks to the angels and the owls." 

 

My rating: 3 1/2 stars

 

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North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (novel #243)

God help ‘em! North and South have each getten their own troubles. ~ Nicholas Higgins

North and South is…well I’d call it a Victorian Novel, but I guess it is more precisely a Social Novel from the Victorian era. It is set primarily in the fictional manufacturing town of Milton, England in the mid-19th Century and is based on Gaskell’s adult home of Manchester. Gaskell intended to title it with the heroin’s name, but at the insistence of her publisher, Charles Dickens, she agreed to North and South. Dickens didn’t care for the novel much either.

The social issue this novel addresses is ostensibly the plight of the working class during the industrial revolution: unhealthy working conditions, poor wages, no job security. However, I think there was another issue: prejudice and ignorance between the industrialists of the North and landed gentry of the South.

The tale opens on Margaret Hale who enjoys an idyllic life in Hampshire, Southern England until her pastor father has a crisis of conscience that causes him on his own accord to leave the ministry and move to Milton where he has found work teaching some of the families in the smoky manufacturing city. Margaret and her mother are distraught by the change in fortune, and even more so by the change in environment and society. However, Margaret supports her father and accepts their new situation intent to make the best of it.

One of Mr. Hale’s most notable and sincere students is John Thornton, a wealthy, self-made factory owner. Thornton and Margaret are intelligent and assertive and quickly develop a courteous antagonism regarding the merits and faults of North versus South. In one exchange Margaret opines…

“Now in the South we have our poor, but there is not that terrible expression in their countenances of a sullen sense of injustice which I see here. You do not know the South Mr. Thornton” she concluded, collapsing into a determined silence, and angry with herself for having said so much.

 

“And may I say you do not know the North?” asked he with an inexpressible gentleness in his tone as he saw that he had really hurt her.

Initially, they hold each other in mild contempt, yet they also have a restrained, perhaps even reluctant admiration for each other.

When Thornton is admonished by his mother that he thinks too well of Margaret, Thorton replies…

“Mother” (with a short scornful laugh), “you will make me confess. The only time I saw Miss Hale, she treated me with a haughty civility which had a strong flavour of contempt in it. She held herself aloof from me as if she had been a queen, and I her humble, unwashed vassal.

Conversely when Mr. Hale chides his daughter for being too hard on Thornton, Margaret declares…

“He is the first specimen of a manufacturer – of a person engaged in trade – that I had ever the opportunity of studying papa. He is my first olive: let me make a face while I swallow it.

You’ve probably read/viewed enough Gaskell, Victorian novels, Hallmark movies to guess where their relationship is going.

Margaret also encounters the working man, specifically Nicholas Higgins and his two daughters. Margaret and Higgins are also at odds initially, but it is merely from misunderstanding different customs. As they become friends, Higgins asks where Margaret is from and she tells him Hampshire.

That’s beyond London, I reckon? And I come fro’ Burnleyways, and forty miles to th’ North. And yet, yo see, North and South has both met and made kind o’ friends in this big smoky place.

Margaret Realizes... 

From that day Milton became a brighter place to her. It was not the long, bleak sunny days of spring, nor yet was it that time was reconciling her to the town of her habitation. It was that in it she had found a human interest.

Higgins is also a union representative, which puts him on no good terms with Thornton, and by proxy does not improve Thornton’s opinion of Margaret.

And yet…

There is reason to be hopeful. 

It's a marvelous read, masterful work. Gaskell is clearly sympathetic to the working class, but she is fair to portray vice and ignorance on both sides, as well as virtue and nobility. I was less aware of the prejudice in England between North and South. Again, Gaskell made what I believe was a fair portrayal of both. This is the second novel I’ve read by Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters being the other. Both were very good, and I will certainly read more.

My rating:  4 out of 5 stars

 

This novel satisfies the “Cardinal Direction” category in the What’s in a Name? 2025 challenge. The title must contain a reference to a cardinal direction. I should get double credit.

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The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth (novel #234)

Claude Lebel was, as he knew, a good cop.

The Day of the Jackal is the first novel by Frederick Forsyth. It is a political thriller, suspense novel though the very beginning is historical fiction. It recounts an actual assassination attempt on President Charles de Gaulle of France in 1962. The failed attempt was the design of the Organisation armée secrète (OAS) [Secret Army Organisation]. The novel then becomes fiction. After repeated failures, the OAS decides their best chance is to hire a foreign professional killer, who is later codenamed the Jackal.

 

The Jackal is dashing and aloof. He’s a bit like James Bond, only a villain. He is almost admirable for his quiet confidence, meticulous planning, and dedication to his task. I’m always a bit uneasy when authors make me feel that…respect for the bad guy.

 

But fortunately, half-way through the story, Forsyth introduces the Jackal’s antithesis, the less flamboyant, but genuinely admirable, Detective Claude Lebel.

 

When the French government learns that a foreign assassin has been hired by the OAS, the entire French security apparatus convenes to stop the killer. There efforts are confounded by the President’s refusal to change his schedule, or to publicly announce the manhunt for the Jackal.

 

Lebel, by virtue of being called the best detective in all of France by the National Commissioner of Police, is chosen to spearhead the hunt for the Jackal.

 

He is also set up to be the fall guy.

 

Claude Lebel was, as he knew, a good cop. He had always been a good cop, slow, precise, methodical, painstaking. Just occasionally he had shown the flash of inspiration that is needed to turn a good cop into a remarkable detective. But he had never lost sight of the fact that in police work ninety-nine percent of the effort is routine, unspectacular enquiry, checking and double-checking, laboriously building up a web of parts until the parts become a whole, the whole becomes a net, and the net finally encloses the criminal with a case that will not just make headlines but stand up in court.

 

“Thriller” is an apt description. I typically pace myself when reading a novel, but this was hard to put down. The political intrigue was maddening. Several of the government ministers arrogantly and foolishly undermine Lebel’s efforts. The characters are superbly believable: the killer, the cop, the petty bureaucrats, or perhaps the lofty bureaucrats, bystanders, and accomplices. But the cat and mouse between the Jackal and Lebel is the real story. The Jackal always seems to be one step ahead, and time is running out.

 

 

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

 

 

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Hangover Square: A Story of Darkest Earl’s Court by Patrick Hamilton (novel #233)

Click!…Here it was again! He was walking along the cliff at Hunstanton and it had come again…Click!...Or would the word “snap” or “crack” describe it better.

 

This opening line describes a psychological malady that affects George Harvey Bone from time to time and without warning. After the click George falls into a mental fog; he calls them “dead moods”, in which he is somewhat confused and detached. He knows who he is. He can carry on conversations, though he often doesn’t make much sense. It also brings on a primary thought of some important task he must do but can’t recall. After a few minutes into the dead mood, he remembers…

 

He passed a shelter, around which some children were running, firing toy pistols at each other. Then he remembered, without any difficulty, what it was he had to do: he had to kill Netta Longdon.

 

A pretty captivating set up, I was hooked. George is not alarmed by these dead moods. He’s grown used to them. Neither is he alarmed by the realization he must kill Netta. He’s quite matter-of-fact with himself about it, though he recognizes the need for discretion. He doesn’t want the police bothering him afterwards. The dead moods end as abruptly as they begin, though he is more disoriented when coming out. He remembers very little about what happened to him during the dead mood, and has no recollection of plans to kill Netta. On the contrary, he is hopelessly, pathetically in love with her.

 

Which is unfortunate because she is a user. She is a beautiful unsuccessful actress, broke, alcoholic, vain, lazy, extravagant (with George’s money), deceitful, ungrateful, and cruel. I’m certain I missed a few of her vices.

 

Foul as she was to him, there were moments when, because he understood her so well, he was almost sorry for her.

 

Oh yes, she also sympathizes with Hitler. There, now you should get the picture: thoroughly despicable. The novel opens in late 1938 when rumors of war are growing serious.

 

Hangover square is categorized as a dark comedy. I’m familiar with the term, but this novel really made me think about what it means. I infer, something like this: something is happening, or about to happen, that is so horrible that we would find it…well…horrible, but yet, and again I infer, that because we know it is a farce, we may find it almost comical.

 

Wanderer’s opinion anyway. And I need it to be correct, because this novel made me feel something that I’m not at all comfortable with. I almost wanted George to do the deed. That’s OK right, cuz I know it’s a farce…a dark comedy?

 

Yeah, that’s gotta be right.

 

No spoiler. But I should add something about George: he drinks like a fish. Just about everyone in this novel does. George wonders if his drinking and frequent drunkenness might have something to do with his malady. Ya think?

 

Speaking of the malady, I don’t think it’s schizophrenia as Hamilton suggests in a chapter heading, nor do I think it’s dissociative disorder as some synopses assert. George never assumes a different personality. He is just rather obtuse when he’s in a dead mood.

 

My rating: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars

 

 

This novel satisfies the category “shape” (title must include a shape) in the What’s in a Name 2024 challenge.

 

One last thing about George. He’s quite pathetic overall, but he does have one fine quality. He is reading David Copperfield throughout the story.

 

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The Crooked Man: a Sherlock Holmes short story

"The Crooked Man” is a Sherlock Holmes short story from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes collection. According to The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, it was Holmes’ 27th case chronologically.

 

A respected British officer is discovered dead in a locked room after the servants heard him and his wife quarreling. But the wife, and obvious suspect, is rendered insensible by the event.

 

It looks like an open and shut case until Holmes discovers suspicious footprints suggesting a third person and an animal entered and left the room through a window.

 

After this, it’s a pretty disappointing case. Holmes barely uses his famous powers of deduction, and that only to determine the one person who may know the cause of the argument. From there, Holmes simply persuades the witness to tell all. SPOILER: The wife didn’t do it.

 

Not the most exciting of Holmes’ adventures. Indeed, I think it is the least entertaining I’ve read.

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (novel #226)

The Screwtape Letters with Screwtape Proposes a Toast

 

The Screwtape Letters is an epistolary novel: a series of letters from Screwtape, a senior demon, as he mentors and advises his nephew, junior tempter Wormwood.

 

It is commonly referred to as a Christian allegory or apologetic, but I don’t agree with either designation. I don’t believe Lewis was describing something unreal to explain something real. I believe he was describing something quite real, with fictional characters, that occurs very nearly as he describes it. Oh, I doubt there are physical letters exchanged between demons, but I believe the methods of deceit, confusion, despair, and temptation they use are very similar to what takes place in the unseen spiritual realm. Neither does Lewis seem to be making a defense of Christianity.

 

Further, I don’t think of this as a novel even, at least not in intent. I think it is more of an instructional warning of the intents and wiles of the demonic hordes.

 

I don’t feel adequate to synopsize beyond one central point: Screwtape does not take much satisfaction when Wormwood gets his ‘patient’ to merely sin. The senior demon is more concerned with getting humans to disbelieve.

 

Excepts, all the words of Screwtape to Wormwood:

 

Do remember you are there to fuddle him [the patient]. From the way some of you young fiends talk, anyone would suppose it was our job to teach!

 

Keep his mind off the plain antithesis between True and False.

 

Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don’t waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous – that it is the philosophy of the future. That’s the sort of thing he cares about.

 

It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick.

 

Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours.

 

Looking round your patient’s new friends I find that the best point of attack would be the borderline between theology and politics.

 

We thus distract men’s minds from who He [Jesus] is, and what He did. We first make Him solely a teacher, and then conceal the very substantial agreement between His teachings and those of all other great moral teachers.

 

…you soon have merely a leader acclaimed by a partisan, and finally a distinguished character approved by a judicious historian.

 

…the strongest and most beautiful of the vices – Spiritual Pride.

 

What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call ‘Christianity and’. You know – Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform.

 

So inveterate is their appetite for Heaven that our best method, at this stage, of attaching them to earth is to make them believe that earth can be turned into Heaven at some future date by politics or eugenics or ‘science’ or psychology, or what not.

 

END Excerpts

 

I’ve wanted to read this for years. It was fascinating. Lewis said of it…

 

Though I had never written anything more easily, I never wrote with less enjoyment.

 

I can understand that. He dedicates it to his friend J. R. R. Tolkien. The version I read includes the addendum Screwtape Proposes a Toast, added years after the initial publication.

 

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

 

 

This novel satisfies the “Double Letters” category (title must contain double letters) in the What’s in a Name 2024 challenge.

 

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Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens (novel #225)

Oh, late-remembered, much-forgotten, mouthing, braggart duty, always owed, and seldom paid in any other coin than punishment and wrath, when will mankind begin to know thee! ~ narrative from Martin Chuzzlewit

 

As I near the end of Dickens’ works and read some of his lesser-known stories, it is not surprising that they are not up to his usual standard. This is by far my least favorite. I almost feel unfaithful to a favorite author to give it only 2 ½ stars.

 

It is pretty standard fare in some respects: there is a pompous hypocrite, several misers, an orphan, though not the typical Dickens orphan, a rich uncle, and comical secondary characters, including one who prides himself on being jolly no matter the circumstances.

 

So why did I dislike it? I’m not sure. Maybe I’m getting too familiar with Dickens’ formula, but I don’t think that’s it. Maybe I was offended by his unflattering treatment of the United States, but I hope that isn’t it. (More on that in a minute.) Nor do I think it was Dickens’ notoriously slow start and long character development, which seemed even slower and longer than usual. But I don’t know. Maybe it was a little of all of those. I never really empathized with anyone, though Dickens’ hallmark justice was still satisfying in the end.

 

My Rating: 2 ½ out of 5 Stars

 

 

As far as I know, this is the only Dickens novel partially set in the United States. Young Martin Chuzzlewit sets out for America with a faithful companion to earn his fortune. With one solitary exception, he is met with nothing but frauds, cheats, yokels, and bigots. It was not well received in the United States…shocking! Dickens added a preface first and then a postscript to the preface defending himself. He wrote:

 

The American portion of this story is in no other respect a caricature than as it is an exhibition, for the most part (Mr Bevan excepted), of a ludicrous side, only, of the American character…

 

He doesn’t mention that he had recently visited America in an unsuccessful attempt to get American publishers to honor international copyrights. So, his disdain is not without cause, but he is not without the duplicity and hypocrisy that he is so expert in lampooning in others.

 

I still love the bloke, great writer, but this is not his best work.

 

Oh and…I found this marvelously ironic. With his famous sarcasm in the narrative he quips of British parliamentarians…

 

…it is the custom to use as many words as possible, and express nothing whatever.

 

Quite apropos when ole CD uses such a prudent economy of words himself.

 

Maybe I was a little annoyed by his treatment of the U.S.A. ;)

 

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Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm (novel #224)

Zuleika Dobson, Or an Oxford Love Story by Max Beerbohm

 

Death cancels all engagements. ~ the Duke of Dorsett to Zuleika

 

This will be brief; I didn’t like this novel.

 

I am attempting to follow John Updike’s first rule of literary criticism: “Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.”

 

In Beerbohm’s own words, he did not see this work as a novel but rather "the work of a leisurely essayist amusing himself with a narrative idea.” Hopefully, he succeeded in that.

 

The title character, who, though “not strictly beautiful” held universal allure over the heart and mind of any young man she met, looks forward to visiting her grandfather at Oxford…

 

…for it was youth’s homage that she loved best – this city of youths was a toy after her own heart.

 

She’s an instant sensation, literally a femme fatale, inspiring thoughts of suicide to scores of Oxford undergraduates, each of whom despairs of life if their love is not reciprocated.

 

That’s really about it. It’s a farce. I found the characters utterly unbelievable, ridiculous, or contemptuous in Zuleika’s case. Hopefully, Beerbohm achieved his purpose and amused himself. My score below is not a criticism, merely a measure of my enjoyment.

 

 

My Rating: 2 ½ out of 5 Stars

 

 

This novel satisfies the title beginning with Q, X, or Z category in the What’s in a Name 2023 Challenge, and with it, I’ve completed the challenge.

 

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Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (novel #222)

Thinking back now, I can see we were just at that age when we knew a few things about ourselves – about who we were, how we were different from our guardians, from the people outside… ~ Kathy: first-person narrator

 

Never Let Me Go is the tale of Kathy H. She tells us she is thirty-one years old and a carer. The reader doesn’t know what this means, but it sounds like a good thing, and Kathy is proud that she’s been a carer for over eleven years, which is apparently well beyond the norm. Her long tenure is partially due to her being a very good carer.

 

Ishiguro uses this device throughout. Kathy uses phrases or descriptions of events that don’t make sense initially, but slowly, the reader infers the meanings and settings.

 

Most of the novel is Kathy’s account of her childhood, education, and relationship with her two best friends, Ruth and Tommy. In their childhood and adolescence, they are at Hailsham, a boarding school in England. They are clearly a privileged set but also closely controlled and sequestered. Their teachers, known as guardians, and the rules at Hailsham are an odd mix. In some ways strictly regimented; in others strangely permissive. The guardians are never cruel and seldom even harsh, though they are somewhat aloof.

 

The school seems to be preparing the children for some special role in society. When their training is complete, they become carers.

 

But carer…is not the ultimate role. There is another function the reader begins to grasp with outrage and horror. The children slowly understand their fate by degrees, like the reader, but unlike the reader, the children calmly accept their future and even seem to almost look forward to it.

 

Thinking back now, I can see we were just at that age when we knew a few things about ourselves – about who we were, how we were different from our guardians, from the people outside – but hadn’t yet understood what any of it meant.

 

My Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

 

 

Never Let Me Go has to be considered dystopian, though most of the time, it doesn’t feel like it. It is also Sci-Fi, though it doesn’t feel like that either. It raises some very relevant bio-medical ethics questions. I say relevant because they could be applied to different medical ethics today, and I don’t believe it is impossible that they may become relevant in a precisely similar way.

 

This novel satisfies the You or Me category (book with “you” or “me in the title) in the What’s in a Name 2023 Challenge.

 

 

The title is taken from the title of a song by real-life singer Judy Bridgewater. Kathy obtains a cassette tape of Bridgewater that includes the song. It resonates with Kathy, though she cannot explicitly explain why.

 

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