Margaret Atwood says Never Let Me Go is “a brilliantly executed book by a master craftsman who has chosen a difficult subject: ourselves, seen through a glass, darkly.”

The Undependent (UK) called it “an exquisitely nuanced, and extremely moving process of revelation. Never Let Me Go is a novel about love and goodness and the hopes and fears of the human heart.”

Time Magazine named it one of the greatest 100 novels since 1923.

Ishiguro’s novel tells the story of Kath, Ruth and Tommy three students at an exclusive English boarding school called Hailsham. There is something odd about Hailsham and the reader comes to undertsand its secrets at just about the same time as the story’s main characters. It’s actually quite difficult to say any more without giving away plot points which are essential to the novel.

Despite the fact that there is a sense of urgency to understand just what is going on at the school, Never Let Me Go is not a mystery story. Ishiguro does a great job of stringing the reader along, sure, but the true genious of this novel is what he says about hope where there can be none and love where there shouldn’t be. And despite the fact that it does tackle larger issues- of morality and the consequences of science- the novel is also about these three friends, their triangular love affair and their hopes and dreams for the future.

It’s a remarkable novel.

But I didn’t like it very much.

I found it somehow disorganized- the narrative was choppy. The novel’s climax was mainly expository. The novel’s themes are reiterated by a secondary character. I wanted to care for Kath and Tommy and Ruth- and I did- but I wanted to care more, I guess. Still- the final scene of the novel is haunting and if the novel were to be held up as an example of the extremes (both the cruelty and kindness) of mankind- I’m sure you’d be hard pressed to find a book that does it better than this one.

So, I didn’t particularly enjoy the book, but I wouldn’t hesitate in saying that it is worth reading.

Alan Lightman is an adjunct Professor of Humanities, Creative Writing, and Physics at MIT. Of his novel Reunion the New York Times Book Review said: “Elegant…spare, economical and charged with meaning.”

I’m going to be honest: I am a sucker for this kind of book – lost love, longing, a trip to the past. So I would have thought that Reunion would be right up my alley because it has all the ingredients necessary to punch me in the gut.

Charles is professor at a small college. He’s divorced and the father of a grown daughter. We meet him as he is about to return to his Alma Mater for his 30th reunion. It is here that Charles is catapulted back into his past to relive his first love-affair, with a ballerina named Juliana. His past doesn’t rise up to meet him in the flesh. Instead, while gazing into a model of the college campus as it once was, Charles has a sort of complicated hallucination where he relives the whole affair and struggles to reconcile the memory with the reality of it.

On some levels the book really worked for me.

Young people explode with their discovery of the world and the newness of life…What young people don’t realize is that so much is happening for the last time as well. The world is both opening and closing at once.

I understood this. I felt tremendous empathy for Charles as he came to terms with the knowledge that he couldn’t go back and recapture those first, fleeting moments of love or be the person that he was then.

And while Lightman is a gifted writer, I think it’s the scientist in him that kept me from fully engaging in the book. There were sections of the book that bored me – a lot of the first 50 pages or so- but when Charles was fully sucked into his past, reliving his love affair with the enigmatic, Juliana, I went with him gladly, even though I knew it would not end well.

Here’s a funny thing: I liked this book, but I don’t have a freakin’ clue what it’s about. Well, I sort of know that it’s about a well-regarded artist Isobel (Iso) and her 18 year old son, Toby. When Iso takes a lover, the enigmatic Roehm, Toby’s life is thrown into a tailspin. But The Deadly Space Between is not a straight forward tale by any stretch.

First of all, only 15 years separate Iso and her son and their relationship is complicated and sexually charged. The story is narrated by Toby and it’s difficult to know how reliable his observations are: Are his memories exaggerated? Is Roehm as other-worldly as he seems?

Roehm is a mysterious character, that’s for sure. Seen through Toby’s eyes he is huge, white and powerful; much like the monolithic winterscapes his mother is currently painting. Roehm’s arrival unbalances Toby’s relationship with his mother- which is clearly too insular- and even though the only information we get about Roehm is skewed through Toby’s eyes, his mysterious presence is what propels the novel through to its strangely unsettling conclusion.