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Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go

Mike

New Member
This is a superb yet enigmatic novel, possibly more heart rending and thought provoking than any novel I have read for a long time. I'll have to be clear right at the onset that this novel isn't science fiction so I'll make it clear right now there could be some SPOILERS in this short review. It isn't giving too much away to say the novel is about cloning but it isn't about some weird future like Brave New World or some outcome of the modern world like Oryx and Crake. In fact its set right now in our times perhaps just a little changed; an alternative nowadays then. There isn't any science in it either; no leaps of scientific imagination needed. Ishiguro has written another novel that brings us right down to the inner personal level of the characters - like he did with Remains of the Day, the "big" picture as it were, the background to the reality within the narrative we aren't shown. This is the enigma; we never get the whole background to the story there isn't the filling chapters that tell us how this alternative reality came, there aren't a host of subset characters to fill in the shadowy areas. The novel isn't trying to open debate or make clear the authors point of view of genetic research or cloning it merely poses the dilemma for us - as I said no science is involved, no horror or gore. No deep theological meanings are explored or implied; the simplicity of the novel is its asset. It tries to tell us about the loss of our own hopes and dreams and of our own acceptance of our fates.

Kathy, Tommy and Ruth appear to have an idyllic life in a boarding school called Hailsham out in the English countryside Kathy is the narrator of the story as she sees it in flashback. As the gentle background evolves it becomes clear that this strange peaceful life they lead as children masks a dark reality that they accept. They are to be organ donors when they grow up, there is no talk of parents or of brothers and sisters or real family life. They live in a cultured world of art and poetry and gentle sports with much emphasis on sports and health. There is little contact with the outside world yet it isn't some weird concentration camp. They know they are to be donors and they accept it they see it as an honour, a duty. Yet to all intents and purposes they are quite normal children growing into teenagers with all the angst that goes with normal growing up. I was at first awaiting some revelation in the text that they were some kind of abnormal multi-limbed freaks but they aren't at all. Specially bred clones they are but normal in every respect. The narrative concerns the main three growing up in the school environment then leaving to some form of halfway house before going on to become the "donors" alluded to in the school. The narrative never concerns itself with the donation process - how does this work? Why do they accept it? How has society got to this level of normality where people are bred to donate organs then presumably die when all the important ones are gone? What monsters are these that have conceived such a nightmare? No, none of this is covered, not even alluded to except in the most obscure and obtuse ways. This very obscurity at first convinced me there was some vast plot hole with buses coaches etc awaiting permission to drive through or that Ishiguro had just written a novel with blanks that the reader was meant to ignore. But the obscurity is the whole point of the novel we are forced to look through the eyes of the children growing up and the confused adults they become, their acceptance and docility as children then onto their hopes and dreams as young adults is to be honest deeply moving and heartbreaking. They accept their hopes won't be realised as adults realise perhaps their childish dreams of being spacemen or pop stars won't come to pass. But the sinister future of the "students" as they are referred to and the "training" they are given to become "carers" until they too can become "donors" is all just accepted as part of life, as part of growing up. The world carries on regardless - they watch TV and go out and just accept. This is what the novel is about, letting go of dreams to become just another part of the crowd, accepting our place in life uncomplainingly and plodding on till we are old - or in the case of the students of Hailsham till they "complete" - or die in our terminology.
 
Thanks for the great review Mike. I also wondered why they didn't just run away. Maybe you are right that the acceptance is what the novel is about - I hadn't thought about it like that. I'll have to give it some thought. I have spent a great deal of time thinking about this book - it's one of those that stays with you for ages, in a haunting way. Ishiguro writes so beautifully that I became immersed in the lives of the characters and felt so much sympathy for them.
 
March 2006 Book of the Month

From Amazon.com
All children should believe they are special. But the students of Hailsham, an elite school in the English countryside, are so special that visitors shun them, and only by rumor and the occasional fleeting remark by a teacher do they discover their unconventional origins and strange destiny. Kazuo Ishiguro's sixth novel, Never Let Me Go, is a masterpiece of indirection. Like the students of Hailsham, readers are "told but not told" what is going on and should be allowed to discover the secrets of Hailsham and the truth about these children on their own.

Offsetting the bizarreness of these revelations is the placid, measured voice of the narrator, Kathy H., a 31-year-old Hailsham alumna who, at the close of the 1990s, is consciously ending one phase of her life and beginning another. She is in a reflective mood, and recounts not only her childhood memories, but her quest in adulthood to find out more about Hailsham and the idealistic women who ran it. Although often poignant, Kathy's matter-of-fact narration blunts the sharper emotional effects you might expect in a novel that deals with illness, self-sacrifice, and the severe restriction of personal freedoms. As in Ishiguro's best-known work, The Remains of the Day, only after closing the book do you absorb the magnitude of what his characters endure.
 
Kathy mentions in the first lines of the book that she is a carer. Does anybody know what that is? I am currently in the process of reading the book (I'm on Chap.9 at present) and am still slightly confused at that. :confused:
 
jaynebosco said:
Kathy mentions in the first lines of the book that she is a carer. Does anybody know what that is? I am currently in the process of reading the book (I'm on Chap.9 at present) and am still slightly confused at that. :confused:

You will find out what it is later in the story. Be patient. :)
 
By Chapter 9, I think you start to get the idea of what kind of carer she is...

Off to fetch my copy...

EDIT: Sorry, maybe not!

Chapter 8 is where she "chooses" Harry to be the one she loses her virginity to. So they're 16 at this point, and the comments from Miss Lucy have been heard and not yet understood.

It's soon, very soon.
 
I'm currently rereading Never Let Me Go and I posted about it on the Ishiguro thread, forgetting it was also this month's book group choice and could have been more profitably commented on here. Sorry.
 
That's my fault, I got impatient waiting on this thread for the discussion to start, so went searching on other threads to see if there's anyone I could recruit ;)
 
OK, as kind of a newbie, how does the Book of the Month discussion work? When do we start discussing? Or can we start now, but with spoilers? Reason I ask is because I read the book already, but I don't want to spoil the fun for anyone whose not finished it yet. :)
 
Start now!!!

Dunno about the spoilers, I think we do use spoilers at first, could be wrong though.

:rolleyes: :rolleyes:
 
I think - though I'm open to correction - the theory is that anyone reading this forum is presumed to have read the book, and/or not to mind seeing spoilers. Particularly with a book like this, where much is revealed over the course of reading, I think if we were to use spoiler tags for everything potentially revealing, the thread could quickly come to resemble an oil spill.
 
Ok, no spoilers... :)

Let's get going then, in the words of... err. I dunno, actually. :rolleyes:

So what did you think of Kathy then? Ruth? Tommy? Who was your favourite character?
 
This is the first Ishiguro book that I have read. I really liked it. I think my favourite character was Tommy. He seemed to be the most straightforward and honest. I would have said that he was the most naïve, but I think they were all naïve about their situation. It is a book that I will remember and think about for a long time.
 
Balmy Westwind said:
It is a book that I will remember and think about for a long time.

Everyone says that, why?

I thought Tommy was okay too. I liked that Ishiguro made him a little bit less-than-perfect, having tantrums etc. And I liked that Tommy didn't like to draw, and wasn't good at it, when it seemed all the other Hailsham students all were. When they were teenagers, I kinda went off Tommy a bit, because it was obvious from page 1, him and Kathy were meant to be an item, but he didn't have the courage to stand up and tell Ruth.

And then, later, when he and Kathy became an item, and he left her that day, to go and hang around with the other donors, it broke my heart. I thought that was the saddest part of the whole book, much more subtle, than any of the "real" sad scenes, like when Tommy and Ruth visit Madame.

I didn't warm towards Ruth at all. I'm not sure we were meant to? She seemed spoilt throughout, from her 'secret guard' to protect Miss Geraldine, to the pencil case, to the way she hung on the words of Chrissie and Rodney, and ridiculed Tommy about his 'animals'. Even when she was near to "completing" and she gave her speech to Kathy (and Tommy), I didn't feel sorry for her. Too little, too late.

Kathy I felt barely anything toward. She was pathetically accepting of everything, that just saddened me - not in a sympathetic way, but in a heartless way. I read the story hating myself for feeling nothing for her and her friends' situation.

Miss Lucy, Madame and Miss Emily were all good characters, I thought, and they really added to the story.
 
This was a really fantastic book right up until the end I think. The ending, for me, was a little bit of a let down - no, wait, make that a lot of a let down. Nothing overly devastating was revealed; I was expecting a shocking, everything is revealed and discussed extensively ending, but I just didn't get that. Quite dissapointing after such a brilliant start.

With that being said, right up until near the end this was one of the best books I had read that year. The characters were extremely realistic (they made mistakes and had some personality glitches - not something that you see too often anymore) and so therefore entirely able to be sympathised with. The writing was beautiful, and the story compelling - if only it had continued on as such!

Overall, an average book because of the ending, IMO. The Remains of the Day was much better.
 
I agree, The Remains of the Day was much better.

However, I found the story itself disappointing until the end. Throughout, I felt it was written a bit too drawn-out and a bit too informally. It jumped about quite a lot, especially with the Miss Lucy scenes, though I realise that the narrator was trying to piece things together, and so we were too.

But then at the end, it kind of all came together, and I appreciated all those tedious and repetitive descriptions then.
 
Kathy I felt barely anything toward. She was pathetically accepting of everything, that just saddened me - not in a sympathetic way, but in a heartless way. I read the story hating myself for feeling nothing for her and her friends' situation.

This was a really fantastic book right up until the end I think. The ending, for me, was a little bit of a let down - no, wait, make that a lot of a let down. Nothing overly devastating was revealed; I was expecting a shocking, everything is revealed and discussed extensively ending, but I just didn't get that

But wasn't this the whole point of the story: That they accepted everything as something completely normal? That they were so brainwashed by society that the fact that they were bred for the sake of their organs only didn't cause them to rebel at all? Even though they harbored the hope that they could prolong their lifes by going to Madame, they still accepted it when the answer was no. And even though the thought of running away did cross their minds, they didn't do it.
 
It was the whole point, I agree. I don't think they should have run away, or challenged the decision at all. I think the story was fine, but the writing of it somehow lessened the impact, which I don't think the author intended. Some people thought this book was very moving. I didn't, and I wanted to. I think Ishiguro wanted readers to empathise with their situation.
 
I agree with you that Ishiguro wants the reader to empathize with the Hailsham kids, but I also think your reaction to the book is what makes it interesting - your intellect tells you that what is being done to these people are just horrible, but at the same time, Kathy's dispassionate way of telling the story takes away the edge. It makes it less horrible, and therefore more so. That clash is for me the best part of the book.

This way of telling a horrible story through a rather detached narrator reminded me of Margaret Atwood's writing style in The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake - the world as we know it is gone, but what can you do? Any thoughts on that?
 
To me, the themes covered in NLMG were more realistic than in Handmaid's Tale. More likely to happen. You could really imagine a future like that, for those Hailsham students. The characters were believable, the teachers especially so. The Handmaid's Tale was less believable to me, but more satisfying a read, because Offred wasn't so apathetic. She detested the situation, and eventually got free. She broke the rules. Kathy stuck by the rules, rigidly. She was pleased with herself for doing her job well, as if that was the only thing that mattered. Which I suppose, it was, when you got down to it.
 
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