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Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro

Start date: June 1, 2016

Finish date: June 30, 2016

Discussion: June 2016- Never Let Me Go

Discussion leader: Marnie

Why we're reading this: This is a tale of deceptive simplicity that slowly reveals an extraordinary exceptional depth and resonan…more
[close] This is a tale of deceptive simplicity that slowly reveals an extraordinary exceptional depth and resonance.

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June 2016- Never Let Me Go

June 2016- Never Let Me Go
By Candice · 59 posts · 119 views

last updated Jul 04, 2016 02:39PM

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Feb 03, 2011 rachel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

Kazuo Ishiguro is a writer close to my heart. Not just because I'm interested in the same questions he's interested in -- namely, how far we will delude ourselves about the things going on around us when life is just pleasant enough in the moment to keep us content. No, Ishiguro is most important to me because he was recommended to me by my uncle, who, in his frequent business trips to Japan became well acquainted with literature by Japanese authors and recommended to me Murakami, Mishima, Ishig Kazuo Ishiguro is a writer close to my heart. Not just because I'm interested in the same questions he's interested in -- namely, how far we will delude ourselves about the things going on around us when life is just pleasant enough in the moment to keep us content. No, Ishiguro is most important to me because he was recommended to me by my uncle, who, in his frequent business trips to Japan became well acquainted with literature by Japanese authors and recommended to me Murakami, Mishima, Ishiguro. Although he's technically a British writer, my favorite of these is still Ishiguro.

My uncle and I share something of the chilly remove of Ishiguro protagonists. He's dutiful and kind, but direct with his opinions. I typically don't speak unless spoken to, though I'm aware that people often read shyness as snobbery. At every family gathering, he manages to find me at some point to ask what I'm reading. I look forward to these conversations. When we're in the midst of one, I feel closer to my uncle than I do to almost anyone else I know. A Pale View of Hills is, I believe, his favorite Ishiguro. Remains of the Day is still mine.

So to me, there's a comfort and a familiar reflection in an Ishiguro book. He gets repressed people. You can open an Ishiguro and know fairly well what to expect. The narrator will be unreliable. There will be something devastating happening underneath the surface and your narrator, who is generally an innocent but wants terribly to believe that this devastating thing is not happening, will drop hints of the horror and then rationalize it away, so that it seems like everything might really be OK after all. The obliqueness and rationality of Ishiguro's characters makes them tough to warm up to. To those of us who aren't warm, it also makes them very real. Never Let Me Go is no different.

But Never Let Me Go is a departure for Ishiguro, in the sense that it's more speculative than any of his other works. I won't spoil the conceit for you if you've managed to make it through the movie promos and the five years this book has been out without being spoiled for it. But I will say that it details a future (though set in the past) that doesn't seem too impossible. The thought of humanity getting to this point is the equivalent of a kick in the ribs, and there are some scenes in the book -- Madame weeping when she finds young Kathy H. dancing alone comes to mind -- that are devastating.

This may be his most ambitious book (with the caveat that I have not yet read The Unconsoled). It might not be my favorite Ishiguro, but I definitely don't disagree with calling it a modern classic. ...more

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Jun 13, 2016 Leo Walsh rated it really liked it

When done right -- like Atwood's "Handmaid's Tale" or Huxley's "Brave New World" -- science fiction is able to do things that more realistic literature cannot. And most often, the writers who do SF right are serious writers who happen to write a SF tale. And Ishiguro, author of the excellent "Remains of the Day," is a top-shelf author writing a dystopic alternative history In "Never Let Me Go." The result is superlative.

The narrative is told first person, through the Caregiver Kathy's eyes. The When done right -- like Atwood's "Handmaid's Tale" or Huxley's "Brave New World" -- science fiction is able to do things that more realistic literature cannot. And most often, the writers who do SF right are serious writers who happen to write a SF tale. And Ishiguro, author of the excellent "Remains of the Day," is a top-shelf author writing a dystopic alternative history In "Never Let Me Go." The result is superlative.

The narrative is told first person, through the Caregiver Kathy's eyes. The text has a conversational feel, and she ruminates through her early life as a student at Hailsham, a special school for "special children" like Kathy. Parts of this were charming, reminding one of "Mill on the Floss" or "Harry Potter," where imaginative children keep imagined stables of imagined horses. Or created a "secret society" dedicated, with Nancy Drew-like fervor, to foiling an imagined plot against a favored teacher. And how children can dip in and out of each other's fantasies while remaining integral and sane.

But there are dark undertones. It becomes evident that these children are much different from their teachers, many of whom seem afraid of them. Then you learn they are sterile. And when their future lives are hinted at -- to avoid spoilers, I won't say more -- the book grows ever more horrific.

I don't think Ishiguro meant this to be a realistic SF alternative future. And it isn't particularly interested in the science. Though set in an alternative version of the 2000's, some of the technology he presents as vialble 30-years ago is decades beyond what we can do today. Instead, Ishiguro was writing a fable trying to ferret-out "what makes a human an human?" and "what is a soul?" He illustrates these issues with aplomb. And those questions lead to a chilling examination of humankind's propensity to objectify others -- in this case the "gifted" children. But objectification has historical roots that resonate freely: from the European slave trade through how governments dehumanize their enemies.

I was horrified that a culture would raise children like they did, treating them as mechanical tools. I felt a moral outrage since Kathy, though doomed, seemed a gentle, loving soul.

But then I looked around at my own reality, and wasn;t sure we were better. Our own leaders often treat people as cogs. CEO's callously lay off workers and destroy entire towns by off-shoring jobs. To the executives, the workers are mere cogs, and their loyalty is with the abstract bottom-line instead of the communities that had once fostered them. The US is still mired in a 15-year long war in Afghanistan -- who were painted, during the run-up to the war, as backing Bin Laden, to the man. ISIS beheads people as being either non-Muslim or not Muslim emough. The US has militarized their police, turning it against the poor. As I write, NPR blares in the background, telling how videos of police gunning down two innocent, dehumanized black me in the last 48 hours has gone viral in social media. Worse, Black Lives Matter "protesters" killed 5 police and 2 innocents the next day in retaliation -- never realizing that they had objectified the police.

My outrage at the culture waned. I realized the Ishiguro was writing a parable about us. And I fell, chastened.

I took points off at the end for the "explanation" given Hailsham's former head mistress and the enigmatic Madam. That section reads like a data dump, and I had it figured out by then. But, I suppose, since Ishiguro tells the story through Kathy's point-of-view, it is the only way she'd ever learn the truth.

Powerful parable. That reads like a section from one of David Mitchell's books, but better. Four Stars.

...more

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Aug 05, 2021 Kristi Krumnow rated it it was ok

Shelves: audiobook, europe, audible, literary-fiction, mystery, 21st-century, college-university, fiction

The author had to have had a plan to write about boarding school-children as clones or as children created for usage of their body parts. These are interesting ideas since fear of the unknown is creepy and has worked in British literature since the 18th and 19th century (i.e., Bram Stoker's Dracula, Walpole's Castle of Otranto, Austen's Northanger Abbey, and Ann Radcliffe's Mystery of Udolpho). However, the latter-mentioned novels set up a goal from the beginning. Ex: exploring a new place, sear ...more

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May 22, 2013 Anne Attanas rated it it was amazing

Readers on this site have given this book mixed reviews, and after finishing it, I can understand why. It's a very quiet book with little action and after understanding the dystopian premise of the book, I can see where this quietness might be disappointing. Yet it is this quiet voice that is so necessary in bringing about the profound story this book is telling. The voice is haunting yet inviting, and will stay with you long after you have finished the novel. The narrator's tone seeps into the ...more

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Nov 18, 2012 Carol rated it liked it

Shelves: ishiguro

Different type of story . . . Takes place in the late 20th century in England where human beings are cloned and raised for the very purpose of harvesting their organs when they become adults. The 3 main characters - Kathy H., Tommy and Ruth -- are clones who grow up in rural boarding school where they are encouraged to write poetry, make paintings and enjoy the outdoors. They move to another facility as young adults and their relationships change for the worse. In the end they are reunited and R ...more

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Nov 19, 2010 Kosh Koshover rated it really liked it

To be honest, I am still not real sure how to describe this book. When I first started reading it, I thought it was going to be hard to get into because the pacing was so slow, but as you continue to read it you realize that it is meant to slow, with little nuggets of revelations along the way. I enjoyed the book and am looking forward to reading some of Ishiguro's other work, that being said I feel if half stars were an option I would have given this book 3 1/2 stars, so it gets a bump up inste ...more

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Aug 14, 2018 Beth rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2018-read

A beautifully written, evocative and quietly devastating novel. The understated narrative and the gently unfolding truth pack a gut punch I rarely find in fiction these days.

Read it, without spoilers or knowing too much about it. Just find yourself irretrievably sucked into the world of these characters and go with it. It is a moving and unique experience.

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