Never Let Me Go

A deeply moving examination of mortality through an unexpected lens. The direct--"this is normal"--voice of the main character/narrator, as against the reader's slowly emerging awareness that things are anything but normal was extraordinarily powerful. Books do not make me cry; this book came as close as possible.

This is not a novel with a surprise, twist ending. Rather, it's a story that reveals secrecy in incremental degrees. Little by little we find out what the protagonist knows and does not yet know about her circumstances and destiny. Incidents that do not seem particularly monumental to us are revealed as she reflects on her memories, with their importance not to be understood by the reader until later on. By the time we've figured out what's going on (I won't spoil things by revealing what that is), we are invested in the lives of the central characters. Once invested,… show more.

It may be the best book ever written. Okay, that is hyperbole. But this is literary science fiction with a powerful social message. This is literary science fiction with wonderful and evocative scenes of childhood and young love. This is literary science fiction which prompts emotion and thought, which means this book becomes a dialogue between you and the author. Of course, in such masterful storytelling, you care about the characters and what happens to them. The storyline is terribly sad but I felt uplifted for having read this book. This was, in fact, my second reading (listening).

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.