Rating... 4⭐
You Can Buy "Never Let Me Go"...Here
Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, Never Let Me Go 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.
I read this book as part of the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge. For more info click here. The prompt for this book was "Academic Thriller."
Well, it's mainly set in or related to a boarding school so thats the Academia part covered, but I don't really think I could call it a thriller, it's more of slow burn.
There is a gradual reveal of a twist throughout the book, which is only confirmed in the last third. So in an attempt not to give away too much to start with, the first part of this review will be spoiler free. However because the twist is the book I feel that I will have to mention it. Before this point of no return occurs there will be a spoiler warning, at which juncture you can, if you feel the need, swerve the rest of the review.
The book is written in the first person. It is through the eyes of 31 year old Kathy, who reminisces about her boarding school days with her two best friends Ruth and Tommy. Later after leaving the school she crosses paths with them again. It is set in the 1990s. However it slowly becomes apparent that this not your bog standard boarding school. Nobody has a last name, just an initial. No parents visit ever, and the only time the students leave is when they graduate. The students don't really know where the school is and are discouraged from entering the nearby woods. Creative arts are heavily promoted through out the school and a visiting dignitary often takes away the best examples of art and poetry. The students have a vague idea that something is a bit "squiffy" but it generally isn't talked about. The narrative focuses on the three main players. There is huge meaning behind every social inter-action, every conversation is heavily nuanced and has consequences. Much like teenagers the world over then. This slow moving, repressed, exchange is the author's strong suit. He really does it well..
SPOILER ALERT
It is gradually insinuated and hinted out through out the book, each chapter adding a little more evidence piece by piece, that Hailsham School was in fact a school for clones. These clones are to be brought to maturity and used to harvest organs for humans. They are like battery farmed chickens. Our protagonists don't know they are clones. They gradually come to suspect it but the surprising thing is they act as if they are resigned to death (or completing as they call it) to be used as spare parts. There is no terror or gnashing of teeth, no armed rebellion, no going on the run. They are stoical lemmings and this is the most disturbing part because in the real world that is us also, We just accept the journey to death without too many questions..
The narrative is very clever in that when we begin to read, the protagonists are normal kids, with the usual emotions, fears, hopes and loves. As the truth slowly dawns, it's too late for us to emotionally back out, we are invested. How can they not be human if they have emotions, fears,, hopes and most of all love. Are we the monsters for using their organs and killing them? Why don't they rebel or run? has a lust for life been genetically modified out of them or like the rest of us. Do they sort of just accept that's their road in life. I can see parallels in the real world here. I sometimes think if I were to be conscripted to fight a war, obviously not going to happen at my age but go with me here, would I have the courage to refuse or just blindly accept my fate to be used as cannon fodder.
The author is very cunning also in using the word students throughout the narrative. That is right up until two of our love triangle confront the now aged headmistress and the word clone is used once and once only., as if in final horrific confirmation of worst fears. It turns out Hailsham school was just a experiment in humane animal husbandry. Give them a nice childhood with a good education before we cut them open and retrieve the bits like a scrapped car. Although why bother? Battery hen or free range they still end up on the same plate. Battery/free range, clones/students it's just semantics really isn't it?
I have read a few books that have an all consuming air of outright despair for the human race (most notably Cormac McCarthy books) but NLMG has a creeping, insidious air of sadness in every sentence. So despite it's almost glacial pace, it is two things. heart breaking and thought provoking.
“We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.”
All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma.”
“The problem, as I see it, is that you've been told and not told. You've been told, but none of you really understand, and I dare say, some people are quite happy to leave it that way.”
you realise that you really are different to them; that there are people out there, like Madame, who don't hate you or wish you any harm, but who nevertheless shudder at the very thought of you – of how you were brought into this world and why – and who dread the idea of your hand brushing against theirs.
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Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
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KAZUO ISHIGURO was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and moved to Britain at the age of five. His eight previous works of fiction have earned him many honors around the world, including the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Booker Prize. His work has been translated into over fifty languages, and The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, both made into acclaimed films, have each sold more than 2 million copies. He was given a knighthood in 2018 for Services to Literature. He also holds the decorations of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star from Japan.
