Never Let Me Go

Made into a film within the last few years starring Keira Knightly, Andrew Garfield, and Carey Mulligan, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is a beautifully crafted piece of literature that explores the darker terrain of love, friendship, memory, and human fragility whilst simultaneously tackling a difficult theme of the inhuman and what makes an ‘Other’ a ‘Same’. 

Quite a few of Ishiguro’s works make it into The Book, this one not amongst them, but being the first book of his that I’ve read, I now cannot wait to go out and get a few more for my library. Never Let Me Go is simple, intimate, and although it deals with some darker and some would argue, rather disturbing themes, there’s a strong and warm heart beating deep within this novel’s pages and I absolutely adored it from start to finish. 

Kathy, a devoted and particularly successful Carer reminisces about her childhood, growing up in the seemingly idyllic boarding school Hailsham, her adolescence in the countryside after leaving Hailsham and living with friends in the Cottages, and finally her rekindling and revitalising lost friendships during her years as an adult and Carer. 

From the blurb I’ve given there, it doesn’t really sound like anything special does it? But the brilliance and beauty behind this novel becomes apparent when the reader is made aware that Kathy and all her friends at Hailsham are not like other humans. Modelled off real people, Kathy and the Hailsham students are clones; brought into the world and reared for the purpose of donating their vital organs to cure incurable human diseases. When we come to realise this cold fact, we’d expect the story to suddenly take a darker turn for the worst, but the way in which it’s written and the fact that the seemingly ‘inhuman’ narrator is regaling us with memories and anecdotes that could have come from any of our childhoods helps to convey the drama of the students trying to come to terms with their existence as well as takes away a lot of the melancholy and darker drama that can so naturally threaten to engulf the story. 

Written in the first person register, Never Let Me Go is narrated by Kathy and essentially made up of experiences and anecdotes and how she looks back on them and what she makes of them over time. The first person register guarantees this fantastic intimacy between the reader and Kathy and the fact that the language is quite genuine and down-to-earth, it makes you feel as though you’re actually in a café or somewhere really having this discussion with a long-lost friend. Right from the off you’re welcomed into Kathy’s world with wide open arms and Kathy embraces you, too happy to tell you her memories, her experiences, and reminisce with you. This feeling stays with you for the book’s entire duration; the atmosphere never falters for a second, you’re always right there with Kathy, Ruth, Tommy, all of them. You’re at Hailsham by the pond, you’re in the boiler hut at the Cottages, and you’re having biscuits and mineral water with Kathy and Ruth discussing the old days. This here is the book’s power and beauty; I believe that it takes a very gifted writer to take a relatively grim or melancholy topic and write about it in a way that filters out all that regret, horror, drama, and lamentation that so closely follows. Suzanne Collins somehow managed to do it in The Hunger Games and now Ishiguro, a wondrous literary talent. 

Filled with friendship, drama, love, identity discovery, and nostalgia, Never Let Me Go is a wondrous piece of literature that is both easy to read and wholeheartedly engaging. I absolutely adored it!