#it always felt on the cusp of being the flaw in the novel

[lairn]

Book 2/24: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Rating: 5/5

This is my fourth Ishiguro book, and my second favorite behind Remains of the Day. The protagonist, Klara, is built to be a companion to a child, and with her as a narrow window, the reader learns about a scifi dystopian society and the individuals within it.

Ishiguro is a lovely writer, and does an impressive job capturing Klara’s thoughts and ways of processing information. The fragmented imagery, especially during the scene at the waterfall and in the moments where Klara goes to the barn are gorgeous and evocative. I like how much he is able to convey about the nature of Klara’s design (both interior and exterior) without ever describing her beyond her haircut, one fluid she contains, and that she might be fairly small. It’s all done with elegance, and often is like studying a painting full of rich color.

I love gleaning information about the world in pieces as Klara gathers more data and gains a greater understanding herself. Initially it was difficult to stop reading because I wanted to know more. However, eventually the general nature of things clears, and Klara’s point of view becomes frustrating, and then tragic. The reader’s understanding of the characters is limited by Klara’s specialized ethos. She is inquisitive, but does not explore people and their significance beyond their relevance to her task as a companion. I thought I understood the characters fairly well by the end, but then they all grow beyond Klara’s understanding, and I found myself left behind as well.

Klara so wants to prevent loneliness, but I think the reader ends up alone as all the humans leave Klara behind. At that point, the tragedy is made clear. The reader understands a lot more about the world than Klara, and can see the society’s sicknesses that are invisible to her. She does not even see the tragedy of her own situation, and the reader is lonely on her behalf. When I finished reading I felt dissatisfied with the direction of the last portion of the book, but writing this now, I’ve changed my review from 4.75 to 5. It is not what I wanted to have happen, but I think it was effective.

[batmansymbol]

thoughts on episode five

i’ve seen some people online describe tonight’s treatment of daenerys as “dehumanizing” and i’m honestly stunned by this response. i thought tonight was a fantastic exploration of how someone who is deeply human, and deeply sympathetic, can do something terrible.

i think daenerys’s story is tragic. i also think that from a narrative standpoint, it’s unexpected. fandom has been spinning its wheels about Dark Dany for so long that it’s easy to forget that this is genuinely an unusual route for her arc to take: who would have thought back in the earlier books & seasons that daenerys’s actions didn’t signal a righteous come-from-behind heroine, but the first acts of a detailed buildup into a dark, complicated anti-heroine?

daenerys is interesting. she is real. she's always had to make difficult choices, and they all conceivably point toward this end as much as an end where she was a right and just queen. i understand wanting a different end for her, because my heart breaks for her and the queen she could have been, but for once in my life i truly don’t understand thinking that this is bad writing or a massive D&D fuckup. this has been cued and foreshadowed for a long, long time, dany being forced to walk a razor’s edge between mercy and what she sees as justice, and it is disconcerting to me that people can’t see those questions right there on the screen.

and the moment that she hears the bells! that’s the strongest empathetic moment i’ve felt all season: the entire crushing weight of all she’s endured to reach this point, and how dissatisfying it is here on the cusp of her total victory and the annihilation of her enemies. i felt all the paradoxical loathing she feels for her prize, her golden jewel, and everything it’s taken from her. i really felt the entire terrible weight of the throne. if that’s not what this series is about, then what is?

i should mention as a caveat that i have always wanted more anti-heroines whose moral choices are given the weight that male characters’ so often are. this quote from a gillian flynn interview with the Guardian feels relevant here:

More generally, it's true of all Flynn's novels that her women can be reliably predicted to outdo the men in their capacity for moral depravity. Flynn identifies herself as a feminist, but does she worry that she's damaging that cause in the quest for narrative shocks? "To me, that puts a very, very small window on what feminism is," she responds. "Is it really only girl power, and you-go-girl, and empower yourself, and be the best you can be? For me, it's also the ability to have women who are bad characters … the one thing that really frustrates me is this idea that women are innately good, innately nurturing. In literature, they can be dismissably bad – trampy, vampy, bitchy types – but there's still a big pushback against the idea that women can be just pragmatically evil, bad and selfish ... I don't write psycho bitches. The psycho bitch is just crazy – she has no motive, and so she's a dismissible person because of her psycho-bitchiness."

i don’t think daenerys falls fully into this category, but i think the same logic is applicable. wanting her to have been a good queen is just a different story. i don’t think either path is a lesser story, or a less problematic story. they’re just different.

i thought this was a gorgeously shot episode. full of mythic dust and light! the moments when arya saw the horse in the ruins, and all of cleganebowl, were the sort of High Fantasy high fantasy that this series doesn’t really indulge in all that often, because it’s usually more interested in grubby, earthy interpersonal interactions. i loved those images, especially intercut with the agony of the burning of the city.

i loved tyrion’s goodbye to jaime in the tent. and as much as i hoped that jaime was going back to kill cersei and that what he’d told brienne was a ruse, i found myself satisfied with the conclusion of the lannister twins’ lives. i maintain that it nearly unravels jaime’s series arc, but somehow ... i still liked it?

i was satisfied with how it concluded the valonqar prophecy, at least! "unexpected gentleness” is something i do NOT associate with this series at all, and yet the idea that cersei died in a moment of comfort, with jaime’s hands around her throat to gently turn her face to his, was, i think, actually kind of beautiful. cersei was a violent narcissist. she perfectly fits the flynn type described above, pragmatically evil, bad and selfish. she had an ugly heart and lived a life full of ugliness, and yet something in me is still soothed by a moment of consolation, even when given to a character who doesn’t deserve it.

that said, my jaime x brienne heart is broken forever and part of me will be inconsolable until i die. going to read a shitload of fanfic tonight, friends.

i loved arya’s goodbye to sandor. her saying his name really cut through the armor they wear. i loved the moment of vulnerability maisie williams let through on arya’s face when she really grapples with the idea of winding up like the hound. we haven’t seen her look that young for a long time, and i thought it was really effective.

so, overall, i’m a strong positive on the episode itself as a whole. and yet a lot of it didn’t hit me the way it really should have. i think the buildup has been questionable this whole season. i don’t think you feel the cut corners fully as they’re happening: i think you really feel them during climactic moments like the one in this episode, where you’re wondering why something isn’t quite the punch in the stomach it should have been. i didn’t cry at varys’s death, or even jaime’s death, and jaime is one of my favorite characters in all of fiction, and i cry very easily. i attribute this to the deep flaws in episode four and, to a decent extent, episodes one and three.

i was dreading this episode off the heels of last week, but i’m now looking forward to next week’s conclusion. i think that’s a reasonably strong endorsement.