Ode to England Inspired by Kazuo Ishiguro

by Zoe Smith

"Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don't go along with that. The memories I value most, I don't ever see them fading."
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

The first time I read Never Let Me Go I was sprawled in a hammock by the Mekong River in South East Asia. It was one of those muggy afternoons where everything, including the hammock strings to my thighs, seemed to melt together in one hot, sticky daydream. Frankly, it couldn't have been a more unlikely place from which to enter Ishiguro's world -- one of bleak skies and stormy emotions...