Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1628 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-02
• Released on: 2006-03-02
• Binding: Paperback
• 276 pages

Synopsis
In one of the most acclaimed and strange novels of recent years, Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now 31, "Never Let Me Go" hauntingly dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School, and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, "Never Let Me Go" is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life.

Customer Reviews

Sensitive, ultimately credible
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is a compelling portrait of people on the downside of a dystopia. Like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale or J G Ballard's Kingdom come, Never Let me Go is built around an abhorrent aspect of social organisation. Crucially, in all three books, the focus of the subject matter is merely an extension of a facet of our own society. Fertility issues provide the material for The Handmaid's Tale, while brainless consumerism fuelled Kingdom Come. Kazuo Ishiguro's subject matter has a medical focus that provides an essentially more credible idea than either of the two other works mentioned. Eventually Ballard's vision cannot be maintained by his scant material, whereas Margaret Atwood's is strengthened by the credibility of its own downside. Ishiguro's story line is strong enough in itself to maintain interest, credibility and drama from start to finish. There is real humanity in this story.

The book begins in Hailsham, an obviously special school set in an idyllic corner of the English countryside. But this is clearly no ordinary education. We follow the fortunes of three of its students, Kathy, Ruth and Tommy. We see them grow up, make their fumbling transformation from childhood to adolescence and then embark upon the stuttering unpredictability of young adulthood. Hailsham's students have to learn how to deal with their own shortcomings and how to manage their talents. They must cope with sometimes strained relations with their teachers, especially in the area of reconciling what they want to do versus what seems to be demanded of them, and thus what they are allowed to attempt. They become aware of sex and introduce themselves to its world in their own ways at different times, each of them reacting differently to their experience.

So what makes these people so special? Well, for a start they live protected lives. They never appear to need any money, nor possessions, for that matter, what little they do have being recycled ad infinitum via a system of almost formal barter. They seem to be protected from fashion, consumerism, family break-up, mass media and even street life. Surely there is something strange about them, despite their apparently normal physical, mental and psychological characteristics.

Not until about half way through the book does the reader start to fill in the blanks. But by the end the dreadful picture is complete, and rendered even more frightening by its complete credibility. To find out the nature of the plot, you will have to read the book, but, though I have stressed the importance of the overall concept's contribution to the book's success, it is not the subject matter that makes this a superb novel. It is the characterisation, the empathy that the reader develops with Kathy and Tommy and the sympathy that their tragedy eventually engenders. The context served to amplify these responses, not blur or confuse them. It is this quality that makes never Let Me Go a completely memorable and highly moving read.

Lazy and pretentious
I was both disappointed and depressed by this book. It seemed to me that the author had an interesting idea which he didn't feel it necessary to think through with enough dedication, and his half-heartedness is evident in this tediously drawn-out and unloveable story. His trademark simplicity of language, elsewhere used with integrity, here only exacerbates a basically poor plot, feeble characterisation, and a curious absence of warmth or sensitivity or insight. Having a first person narrator with such limitations was always going to be problematic, but it doesn't excuse the author's inability to inject any life and magic into the characters or the plot. Time and again he keeps us hanging on with the narrator's promise of 'what happened next' - which is invariably some very minor event which he fails to enliven with any true significance - no humour, emotion, energy or interest. The reader may be drawn in by the easy language, which often degenerates into repetition and banality; but the 'oddness' of the story lies fundamentally in its emptiness. He touches on areas of great potential - the maternal instinct, sexuality and emotion, heredity, the role of art and so on, but leaves them dangling in a way which suggests laziness and sloppiness rather than some sort of postmodern reflection on life in general. He acutely observes nuances of mannerism and behaviour, but the characters themselves are wooden, and we feel Ishiguro himself doesn't really believe in them. The fact that it all ends in death for them in spite of art and love is almost cynical here - his depiction of art and love is as flimsy as the collages the 'students' make out of bits of rubbish. There is such a thing as integrity in art, and I fail to see how this made it into any 'Gallery'.

Disturbingly beautiful
I love the beautiful haunting phrasing of Kazuo Ishiguro, and this novel is no exception. A compelling read and a truely disturbing vision of the future.