Never Let Me Go

I cannot forget this book, even though, at times, I am desperate to do so. Ishiguro, one of my chosen authors and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature is beyond masterful in the unique way he portrays quotidian events before a horror that is almost theatrical in its grotesquerie.

I was deeply disturbed while reading it, yet I could not put it down. Years later, I continue to find it a source of disquiet regarding where our culture/society is going and how we must stop a very particular trend. The trend is increasingly toward science and technology that utterly… show more.

This book sold me on “bittersweetness” as the most important tone I want to write toward. One of the story's most “bitter” turns is the confirmation that art cannot change one’s life or rescue a loved one from a doomed fate.

But though art can't dull the pain of moving through life, it's proof that something endured long enough to assert its existence, however quietly and quickly it passes.

One of Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro’s finest novels (among many), this book, imagines an alternative world in which humans are cloned as a source of organ donations for the wealthy.

The novel is unique in that it does not dwell at length (in fact, hardly at all) on the actual technology underlying the story’s premise. Rather, it is primarily the story of well-developed characters and their relationships with one another as they navigate their way through this nightmarish world.

I became deeply invested in the fates of the three main characters, while also imagining what life would be like in… show more.

A stellar example of what a literary master can do with a science fiction theme, Never Let Me Go is a gripping novel that explores fundamental questions about what it means to be human, one of my favorite themes in any kind of fiction.

Through the consciousness of its young narrator, it drew me into a world only subtly different from ours, but as that difference became more apparent, it was also more disturbing. As I came to love and care for the narrator and her two friends, Ishiguro gradually revealed their terrible fate, one I found more difficult than… show more.

I love Kazuo Ishiguro’s work and this is my favourite book of his.

Never Let Me Go is the fictional story of a childhood that initially seems acceptable, despite the early indications that something strange is going on. As the story proceeds, however, it becomes clear that this is a horrific world, one in which children are being grown for their organs.

But the power of the story for me is not the revelation itself but the way in which it is revealed, layer by layer, as the characters become older and more knowing. That experience of becoming aware that… show more.

I have read many stories and books about clones and the treatment of these beings whose genetic makeup and minds are much like our own.

Kazuo Ishiguro explores more than just the ethics of using clones as though they are not humans through a philosophical lens that brings us to question what exactly makes us human and what our true values are if our sole purpose from the moment of birth is to sacrifice ourselves, cut our lives short, for the sake of others. 

I met Ish many years ago, when we were both promoting our first novels on a Faber tour. I love his work and have read everything he’s written.

But Never Let Me Go is the one that haunts me, for its understated grief and the way it reminds us of what it is to be human, and to face death, in an all-too-plausible and heart-breaking future scenario. 

Spoiler alert: this is not a novel about conventional organ donation.

Rather, it’s a rumination on humanity, morality, science, memory, and power. Following three friends as they come of age at a seemingly idyllic English boarding school, then have to face the truth of what they’re really being nurtured for.

It’s also a dystopian love story and scarily prescient science fiction, and if you don’t end the book with a lump in your throat so large that you almost can’t breathe you’re made of stronger stuff than I am. 

This is a whole different take on human cloning. Never Let Me Go depicts a world in which people are cloned to create organ donors for the sick, necessarily limiting the lifespan of the clones. It is the story of the passions, relationships, and emotions of the clones and their attempts to delay their fate. As with any book by Kazuo Ishiguro, this is beautifully written, and an insightful study of human nature.

Although mostly set in a mysterious boarding school called Hailsham, this novel isn’t about the school, or even what happened there. It’s set in a grim alternative version of England and isn’t for the faint-hearted (no pun intended). 

What a boarding school does to a child is seal them off from ‘real life’ and in this case, Hailsham represents a strange sort of safety; and the real world is devastatingly lethal for the narrator Kathy and her friends Ruth and Tommie.