Never Let Me Go [Kindle Edition]

The setting of the book is "England, late 1990s," but not as we know it. We can tell this even from the limited narrative offered by Kathy, who tells us very little of the real world outside her immediate (and past) environs. There are words dropped innocently but sinisterly: donations, carers, completing, none of which have the meanings we understand. Kathy was a student at Hailsham, a residential institution for children which educated them and encouraged creative expression, but was not quite a school... They are being prepared for lives as 'carers' and 'donors', and they are a form of experiment made possible by advances in technology which, in this parallel world, came in the 1950s but which we are only seeing now.

To say more than this would ruin the story, as there are two mighty coups of revelation delivered about a quarter and halfway through the book, which resonate through the rest of the story and are quite impossible to free from your mind. The impression I get, however, is that Ishiguro is less interested in the sci-fi aspect of this than in using it as an allegory for us all, the stunted limitations of many of our lives, and our blithe acceptance of our ultimate fate.

Although the book has much to say, occasionally - even for this Ishiguro-lover - the saying was a little too restrained, and I was left feeling I had missed something important - why were Tommy's temper tantrums relevant?... What about this, or that, or the other, interminable description of a tiny unimportant incident? For that reason I would suggest that Never Let Me Go is not ideal for newcomers to Ishiguro's work, who should begin with The Remains of the Day. Nonetheless, here Ishiguro has delivered another reliably fine confection, perhaps without the pixel-perfect wondrousness of The Remains of the Day, or the mad beauty of The Unconsoled, but with more accessibility than any of his other books and, despite the unruffled surface, a cast iron certainty to perform open heart surgery on any reader who's got one to give. Read more ›

I think I was lucky to pick this book out of chance; I didn’t know anything about it, and almost nothing about its author (if it wasn’t for the cinema adaptation of his ‘Remains of the Day’, I would have known nothing about Kazuo Ishiguro). And I loved every word of it, I relished every sentence, every page; it took me through its own pace and I never wanted to get to the end. The story of Ruth, Tommy and Kath, told by the latter, describes an extraordinary world of fragility and violence, of life and death, of hope and fear. Not knowing anything about the plot or the characters allowed me to discover the story unfold as if I was opening a treasure chest and finding one amazing thing after another. So if you don’t know what this book is about, don’t read more reviews (I won’t give it away here!) and give yourself the chance to find out by yourself.

This is probably one of those books you love or you hate, it touches you or misses you altogether, but can’t leave you indifferent. Ishiguro’s style is very unique and special, and he shares his imagination and talent with great generosity and care. On the surface it doesn’t seem like a lot happens in this book, so if you are one for action and fast-paced stories, this is probably not for you. The terrible things that this story reveals are told in a very understated way. Ishiguro describes his characters and their lives with an amazing sense of detail, and it is through the small things (a gesture, a smile, a glance, a word) that he manages to reveal so much, very much like a great painter would with a portrait.... To me, this is a masterpiece. Read more ›