Join us as we discuss Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go with Professor Sebastian Groes in a highly insightful conversation. Professor Groes was the perfect person to help us untangle this complicated work, having spent years researching Ishiguro's writing, particularly his treatment of memory, identity, and what it means to be human. Groes talks about the uncanniness Ishiguro uses to prevent our expectations from concluding in the way we would like, adding to the tension of a novel that, in many ways, remains unfinished.

It's a dystopian novel set in an alternate history of England, largely at a secluded boarding school called Hailsham. Here we meet Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy, three children whose friendships, jealousies, and complicated relationships follow them into adulthood. As they grow older, they begin to understand the unsettling purpose behind their upbringing and the limited futures that await them. It's a book about belonging and finding a sense of worth. It's about how the relationships we create shape our future selves and memories.

We explore how the novel is comparable to the American slave trade in many senses, particularly in the ways people were dehumanized and stripped of their identities. We also talk about the advent of AI and how it is perhaps a similarly dominating presence in our current society, one whose takeover we may unknowingly be complicit in allowing.

We discuss Ishiguro's excellent use of tension and the general feeling of hopelessness one feels at the close of this book. And yet, it will still Never Let You Go. Give this novel a read! But spoiler alert, we talk about the ending in this conversation, so if you don't want to ruin it, read the book first!

Join us!

For more of Professor Sebastian Groes's research on Kazuo Ishiguro:

• "Something of a Lost Corner": Kazuo Ishiguro's Landscapes of Memory and East Anglia in Never Let Me Go — A chapter examining memory and place in the novel, published in 2011.

• Kazuo Ishiguro: New Critical Visions of the Novels — A collection of literary criticism co-edited by Groes and Barry Lewis, exploring Ishiguro's treatment of memory, mortality, identity, and ethics.

• Health Warnings: Reading Kazuo Ishiguro in Times of Crisis — Groes's scholarly article examining Ishiguro's work in the context of contemporary crises.

You can also explore his other publications at Sebastian Groes's research website.

This month on Reality Raincheck, we're heading to St. Crispian's for a spoiler-filled discussion of Beth Brower's beloved series, The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion. We're joined by our friend Jessica, a lifelong reader, lover of Victorian literature, and independent bookseller, to talk about Volumes 1–8 and just what makes Emma's world so difficult to leave.

We explore the charm and intimacy of Emma's journal format, her wonderfully distinctive voice, and the unusual freedom she enjoys as a young woman navigating Victorian London. Is Emma essentially a modern heroine dropped into the nineteenth century, or has Beth Brower constructed a believable set of circumstances that allows her this independence within the social constraints of her time?

And then, of course, there are the men. We take a closer look at Hawkes, Pierce, Ithington, Roland, Jack, and the Reprobate Ten, Emma's growing "brotherhood" of friends, the romantic possibilities swirling around St. Crispian's, and what these very different relationships reveal about Emma herself.

We also dig into the series' abundant literary allusions, from Shakespeare, John Donne, Tennyson, and Charolotte Bronte to Walt Whitman, and consider how Brower's obvious love of classic literature enriches Emma's world. We talk about the particular pleasure of reading someone's private journals and why following Emma can evoke some of the same pleasures as Anne of Green Gables and Bridget Jones's Diary.

Finally, we look at Beth Brower's remarkable publishing story, from struggling to find a place within traditional publishing to founding her own press and building an enthusiastic readership largely through word of mouth. Jessica gives us an independent bookseller's perspective on the challenges of getting self-published books onto bookstore shelves and what happens when passionate readers begin asking for them.

If you've fallen in love with Emma M. Lion, Aunt Eugenia, St. Crispian's, and its wonderfully eccentric inhabitants, join us as we happily dissect one of our favorite literary worlds.

Warning: Our discussion contains major spoilers for The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Volumes 1–8.

We had the wonderful opportunity to discuss Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping with George Handley and to marvel all over again at the astonishing beauty of Robinson's prose. Our guest, George Handley, is a professor of humanities at Brigham Young University whose work explores the intersections of literature, religion, and the natural world. A scholar of Marilynne Robinson's writing, he has published on Housekeeping and has interviewed Robinson about her work.

Set in the fictional town of Fingerbone in northern Idaho, Housekeeping follows sisters Ruth and Lucille, who, after a series of losses, are eventually left in the care of their unconventional aunt Sylvie. As the girls grow, they begin to respond very differently to Sylvie's transient way of living and to the question of what it means to belong somewhere at all.

We weren't always in agreement about whether Ruth ultimately finds the ending, or the life, she is best suited for. But we did agree that the depth and richness of Housekeeping reward discussion, contemplation, and certainly more than one reading.

Our conversation kept returning to the idea of home: home as a place, home as the people who hold us, and home as something we inhabit within ourselves. We talked about "housekeeping" as more than the tending of a physical space. It can also be a metaphor for remaining housed within our own minds and bodies, and for what it might mean to become, in some sense, an unhoused soul.

Finally, we considered Robinson's larger spiritual vision: that whatever our mortal state, whatever has been lost, broken, displaced, or left incomplete, there is the promise of a grand completion in the Resurrection.

It was a beautiful conversation about a book that somehow becomes larger every time we return to it. If you've read Housekeeping, we hope you'll join us. And if you haven't, perhaps this is your invitation.

For additional reading by George Handley, look here