Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Never Let Me Go
Book Review: Lovely
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of those wonderful books that you just want to press into someone's hands without saying too much about it. It's a book to figure out as you go along. Even the genre remains a mystery for awhile, something I don't think I've encountered before.
Beautifully written, heartbreaking in the good way, and it really stays with you. I feel like I really know the people in it. I can't recommend this highly enough.
If you're a Margaret Atwood fan, by the way, try this. And vice versa.
Book Review: Thought-provoking premise, skillful writing, but author fails to engage deeper meaning, premise is faulted. Moderately recommend
Summary: 3 Stars
As a child, Kathy H. attended Hailsham, an elite boarding school where children were raised to be both healthy and artistic and taught to believe that both their health and creativity were essential to themselves and to the world they would one day enter. Now an adult, Kathy reflects back on her life. She charts the very slow progression of her growth, her friendships with fellow students Tommy and Ruth, and her knowledge, as she herself gradually began to learn about her role in the outside world--and what this role dictates about her identity. A combination of heavy introspection and soft-scifi, Never Let Me Go has a thought-provoking premise and is brilliantly written, but fails to reach its potential, spending all its time in excruciatingly slow buildup and none of it in impact, theory, or debate. Enjoyable, but somewhat empty, and so moderately recommended.
This book's greatest strength is its writing style, but it is also one of the most irritating aspects. Kathy, the narrator, is intensely thoughtful and analytical, breaking down her personal history into eras, important moments, and developing themes. She walks the reader through the story of her life much in the way she lived it, slowly, very slowly, bringing to light her final realizations. In other words, there is a lot hidden in this book, and it takes the book's entire length--literally until the last fifteen pages--to reveal it all. In between are circuitous examples, where Kathy starts to talk about one event, goes back a bit to explain why the event was relevant, explains the event itself, and then goes on without having drawn a major conclusion--instead, she's just mapped another point on her gradual arc or argument. The resulting pace is excruciating, both artful, brilliantly thought-out and executed, and simply painful as the reader is lead along, disappointed, and lead along again. The book's pace bring the characters to life (although both Ruth and Tommy lack some dimension) and, with it, the life that they lived, through Hailsham and beyond. As such, it is the highlight of the book, worked like an artform, but it is also intensely irritating and makes the book (which actually reads quite quickly) seem longer than it is.
There are a near-infinite number of issues, from the ethical to philosophical, that could be brought to question and debate in this book. The very premise almost begs them--both the science of the base culture and the purpose of Hailsham itself. Unfortunately, however, none of these topics are brought to issue in the text. Instead, the book is consumed by the very slow progression of the story, the creep towards the "twist" revelations of who the children are and what purpose they serve. When finally revealed, these revelations are not all that big--not because they lack the potential to be, but because they pale in comparison to the immense buildup that leads to them. The characters just barely exceed the gradual revelation of the book's premise and are largely just passive carriers of the story, and so the other various issues, the possible debates, never enter into the text. So when other reviewers talk about the questions this book raises, what they're really talking about is the potential for questions--and that is not the same thing. The burden of meaning for this book, everything that the reader could take away and continue to think about, rests entirely on the reader, who must pull out the themes and ask the questions himself, carry on the debates himself. The author shirks his responsibility, and the book suffers for it, failing to live up to its potential.
My final complaint with this book is that the underlying concept seems, blandly, unrealistic. **SPOILERS** follow, so be warned: The fact that in the book's contemporary culture the clones are considered non-human despite looking, acting, and living like humans seems entirely impossible. Consider: Humans never viewed the first cloned animals as different than their original counterparts; indeed, we were amazed and drew attention to the fact that they were identical, that they were clones. So why would cloned humans be any different (especially that these clones pass in human society as normal and indistinguishable)? Outside of the huge wastefulness of cloning entire humans just to harvest their organs, the fact that the cloned humans were not considered humans seems unreal to me, no matter who the gene donors were, no matter what brief attempts Ishiguro (though Ms. Emily) makes to justify it. **END SPOILERS** This is the underlying basis of the book's conflict and plot, and so problems with this concept create problems throughout the book. They weaken the foundations, making it difficult to accept the book and, as a result, even more difficult to take on the work of finding and analyzing themes, which the author fails too do. In the end, Never Let Me Go has a thoughtful premise with heavy potential for thought, theory, and debate, and it is skillfully, even artfully written, but the book fails to live up to its potential: the author does not tackle his own themes, and no matter how interesting the premise, it is an unreasonable one. I wanted to enjoy this book, and I did, but I felt cheated at the end: the final product was surprisingly empty, with the burden of meaning placed entirely and unfairly upon the reader alone.
Book Review: Dystopia Now
Summary: 4 Stars
In the novel Never Let Me Go, while employing an engaging premise, Kazuo Ishiguro explores the black chasm between "the unfortunates" and "those who would presume to aid the unfortunates". Although this is a dark hole indeed, the author succeeds in shining enough light in there for us to want to learn even more about the shadowy forms we've glimpsed scurrying into its fissures (now that I've killed that metaphor...).
Told from the point of view of Kathy H. (one of these unfortunates) Never Let Me Go, a sort of recent past dystopian chronicle, reveals her abstrusely horrific plight as a "carer" (those who help to guide "donors" to a peaceful end) working within the boundaries of Ishiguro's imagined minority group. Kathy and her "boarding" school friends, Ruth and Tommy, attempt to unlock the truth behind some hidden doors of their early life, learning some hard lessons in the process.
On the surface, Never Let Me Go becomes an almost science fiction, a `what could've been' or `what could still be if we're not careful' kind of a moral caveat. But what saves this book is its underlying implications; it asks questions for the real world like: Are we truly helping when we endeavor to comfort and protect groups (racial, ethnic, political, religious, class, etc..) who are perceived as less fortunate than our own? Should we instead educate these groups so that they may empower themselves in time? OK. I'm being a bit leading here, but still these are important questions to ponder in this global society.
Overall, Ishiguro deftly blends science fiction (bio-ethics) and more general socio-political themes to concoct an enjoyable thought-provoking experience. I happily recommend it.
4 stars
Book Review: A Sad Yet Hopeful World
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is sad, yet still offers glimmers of hope. The characters are naive. But they're this way because it's all they know, because of their upbringing. I enjoyed it, and would recommend it to people who like suspenseful, thoughtful books. Book Review: Flawed Souls
Summary: 4 Stars
I agree with the previous reviewer, this book reminded me in tone and atmosphere of Atwood's 'Handmaid's Tale.
The Handmaid's Tale: A Novel If you enjoyed NLMG, then I recommend HT.
This is my second book I've read by Ishiguro (prior was 'When We Were Orphans'). The remarkable items of this book are: 1) Ishiguro's consistent voice throughout the book as narrated by his character Kathy; 2) the form of the writing - I would describe as indirect & plodding, addressing the 'negative space' surounding the characters and habitat. The reader is left to 'peeling the onion' based on the many clues; 3) ethical issues that are raised.
After awhile it became apparent that the charatcers were human clones. To me, a clone implied a level of exactness and perfection in the outcome - that you knew exactly what result and outcome you wanted. However, I found the characters were flawed in a sense. Tommy's behaviorial outbursts, lower IQ and inability to produce meaningful art did not fit with the purposes of the program. Ruth seemed to be easily influenced by any person, object or thing that she encountered. She totally incoporated images found in magazines and hearsay as reality and really had no original ideas, although she did demonstrate a lot of empathy toward Kathy and Tommy before completing. Kathy was the most well-rounded person in the story. I found her to be almost a complete conformist to the Hailsham and Cottages system. She was a bit consumed with sex (not love per se) and sex seemed to lack meaning to her beyond mere intense desire. In the end I think the clones did have souls, but there were limitations in their development that they did not seem to be able to overcome - but this may have been due more to the methodology and treatment than their origins.