Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Never Let Me Go
Book Review: Slowly chilling
Summary: 5 Stars
I have only read one of Ishiguro's previous novels, 'When We Were Orphans', and that was years ago. I vaguely remember it being good but not outstanding.
'Never Let Me Go' on the other hand had a tremendous effect on me and is one of the most exciting and rewarding novels I've ever read. It starts out harmlessly, like a child's tale; a seemingly simple story with initially only three characters narrated in a tightly restrained yet elegant prose. But as you read on, the mood gets darker and darker and (sorry) it never lets you go! Ishiguro achieves the greatest effects not by describing what goes on but by dropping small hints.
The book has a chilling and gutquenching undertone. I was completely drained when I finished reading and the story still haunts me.
I was very surprised to read an interview with Ishiguro where he claimed that this is his most cheerful book to date!
If you loved this, I recommend 'Spies' by Michael Frayn. It also starts off lightly and develops a huge emotional punch. Another great read is 'Cloud Atlas' by David Mitchell, a tremendously ambitous book which also offers a dystopian view into the future (in the same interview, Ishiguro quoted Mitchell as one of the other big-hitting 'serious' others writing about cloning).
Book Review: Searing
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is beautiful, in the Greek "Beauty is harsh" vein. This book is simple, a story of growing up, but it is also complex, a story of a society and a world not that far removed from ours, where a new class of people has been created to serve the good of the whole. This is a story about growing up, of idealism shattered , and of love despite all odds.
This is an incredible commentary about where our ethical decisions might lead us.
Book Review: Unnerving possibilities
Summary: 5 Stars
This Ishiguro novel, shortlisted for the prestigious booker prize, had a strange impact on me. I read it in just two sittings, absorbed by the crystal clear prose that gives an immediacy and pace to the first person narrative of Kathy as she describes her passage from childhood innocence at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham to a chillingly adult acceptance of her ultimate fate as a 'doner'. I quickly became wrapped up in the lives of Kathy and her Hailsham friends Ruth and Tommy right until I turned the last page feeling moved and slightly unnerved. Yet only in the days since have I really felt the full emotional meaning of the story.
The central theme seems indeed to be about the loss of childhood innocence but I doubt very much that the sexual meaning of the term is most relevent here. Ishiguro seems to be telling us a fable about the loss of childhood wonder at the world, the unquestioning joy of being alive in a mysterious universe full of possiblities that most children feel at least some of the time and that all are destined to slowly lose to the cold harsh realities of the adult world. It seems also to ask whether love, friendship and meaning in life can have any intrinsic value given a scientific picture that increasingly sees human nature as goverened by laws indifferent to human hopes and ideals, a world where even love and altruism spring ultimately from the cold mathematical algorithms of evolutionary game theory.
Certainly a book that I'm going to go back to expecting to find something both profound and moving each time. I thoroughly recomend this book.