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Oh Dear. What I feel most genuinely in this first part is a particularly nasty kind of dread that I think Ishiguro specializes in. I can sort of guess what's going on, and so can the characters, and like them, I'm not sure I really want to know. I especially love the way Kath treats this feeling - partly with gentleness towards her younger self, partly with impatience.

Then of course there are the larger issues - is it ethical to grow and harvest people? how does that come about? What is the importance of the Gallery? Does it stay their execution, somehow? I'm interested to see how that plays out.

I also like the way Ishiguro weaves the imaginative work of children in with the imaginative work of adults - both necessary to cope with their contained existences. In a harsh reality, is imagination enough to set you free? And what do you do if you both participate fully in the imaginative exercise (like Kath does with Ruth and her imaginary horses) and at the same time hold the notion that the exercise is... at best impermanent, at worst, false?

Dread is right and yet gentleness is right too. That's quite some story - horrific as it is and desperately sad, it has a beauty in it; a kind of quiet 'seize the day' that is very moving.

Perhaps most disturbing is the thought that we are all contained, we all to a greater or lesser degree live from the harvest of others and that all of our own exercises are impermanent at best. How different are we really from these characters?

The exercise of art/imagination for me is not false but an absolutely necessary mechanism for living with the vision of the abyss. Sometimes as escape, pretending it isn't there but also it can help us to accept it as not just real but essential and to revel in the time we have.