You know those irritating people who talk to children and old people as if they were babies, in a puerile, singsong voice?
Well, those idiots sprang to mind as I endured the narrative voice of this glacially slow yawnfest of a novel.

This is a book so plodding, so dreary and so pretentious that I gave up on it halfway through.
With a less-than-pleased harrumph, I shoved it into a slot on my bookshelf alongside The Remains of the Day, which I'd bought at the same time, anticipating dual sublimity.

So for the past few years there they both sat, on the bookcase equivalent of a naughty step, sulking like teenagers and glaring at me each time I passed.
"Oh, get over yourselves!" I berated, turning them around so that only their pages were on show. Ha! That taught them a lesson they'll never forget!

But right now, I'm giving The Remains of the Day its day in the sun. It's highly spoken of by numerous Goodreaders, so I'm hoping that Ishiguro can belatedly turn my frown upside down.

As for Never Let Me Go, the only thing that I have in common with its improbable story line is that I carry an organ donor card in my wallet, though mine are only due to be harvested after my death. : )

I remember someone describing this as being somewhere between Kafka and Enid Blyton, which is most apt.
Read this book by all means, but don't say that I didn't warn you.

UPDATE: The Remains of the Day was a triumph, in my view!
: )

Poignant, scary, and yet beautiful.

Completely unforgettable. This is, and will remain, one of my favourite novels of all time.

I had this book on my TBR shelf for years without realizing that it was essentially dystopian science fiction.

The main character is a woman in her early thirties reflecting back on her life as a child at a private school in England. Kids in the school grew up in an isolated but almost idyllic setting; not knowing their parents but realizing somehow they were “special.” After finishing school they live together in small groups in cottages before heading out into the world on their own. The story is set in the late 1990s.



From the very first page we learn something is not right just from the language. We read that they have become “carers” and “donors;” their teachers are called “guardians” and they know there are people out there called their “possible.” We also learn they can have sex but are incapable of having children and that after their third of fourth “donation” they have “completed.” So we catch on pretty quickly what life has in store for these kids.

There are some genuine mysteries though. Why does the school seem obsessed with encouraging them to do creative work, giving them awards and collecting the best work to go to a gallery that they never see? Where does it go and who sees it and why?

Much of the plot is built around a three-way love story between a boy and two girls at school. One of the girls is the main character. All three are good friends but the boy and one of the girls are a couple.  The girl in the couple is controlling and domineering and prevents the relationship between her boyfriend and the other girl from developing. Later in life a romantic relationship develops between the other girl (the young woman who is our main character) and the now-young man. In fact she becomes his “carer.” Is the love they develop better than it would have been years ago? Or is it too late and stale?  

This quote tells us about the title: “Because maybe, in a way, we didn’t leave it [the school] behind nearly as much as we might once have thought. Because somewhere underneath, a part of us stayed like that: fearful of the world around us, and – no matter how much we despised ourselves for it – unable quite to let each other go.”



I thought it was a good story; it kept my attention all the way through, although not quite as good as the author’s best-known work, Remains of the Day.

Top photo from englishcottagevacation.com
The author from newyorker.com

[Revised, pictures added, spoiler hidden 12/31/22]

2.5

Um...I'm sorry but I just didn't like it. (Insert frowny face) A few times I thought "okay, here we go!" But then nope, nothing, nada. The majority of the book felt like an epilogue.

Three stars for bringing me into the depressive mood. I mean, I've read his books before and got used to a permanent feeling of sadness and nostalgia, but this is a new level of phychological devastation.
Behind a simple story of growing up in a boarding school are hidden search for the meaning of life, disturbing questions of love, friendship and what makes us humans.
I watched the movie years ago, so the ending didn't strike me as surprise. Yet still it was heart-breaking.

Still remains one of my all time favourites.

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro's Examination of Science and Morality

It was a warm spring afternoon, late in the semester. The windows of Ten Hoor Hall were open. The swarms of honey bees could be heard, hard at work in white blooms bursting from the hedge of abelia that ran across the front of a concrete and brick neo-classical building that housed the history, philosophy, and speech departments on the Campus of the University of Alabama.

That was the day I determined not to pursue my intended career as a teacher of history, the cause of more than one day of regret through many years. Dr. Robert Johnston was rushing to the close of the second semester session of Western Civilization. The day's lecture concerned the end of World War II. Behind me the sonorous snore of a campus athlete vibrated through my skull. At the base of the lecture hall, Dr. Johnston was emphatically explaining the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. It was at that moment I decided to pursue another field of endeavor where those I sought to serve did not sleep through the performance of my service. My ego has shrunk by several sizes since that day. There are definitely those times when I wished my clientele would nap while I accomplished my job.

But, even as I had decided to steer a different academic course, something happened to make me lean forward, watching Dr. Johnston's reaction to another student's question, who had dared interrupt his lecture. One simply didn't do that. Dr. Johnston was the flood of knowledge. Our job was simply to sit there as sponges and absorb the wisdom he imparted.

"Dr. Johnston?" A timid voice tremulously floated through the hall.

"And...What's that?" Johnston's prominent adam's apple bobbled above his regimental striped bow tie. It was blue, gold, with distinctly white diagonal lines dividing the broader bands of color. Dr. Johnston was retired United States Navy. His specialty was United States Naval History. Actually, he was a legend in the academic field.

"It's me, Dr. Johnston!"

"I see that. What is your question, young woman?" His dark eyes seemed to penetrate the petite speaker.

"I was just wondering?"

"Yes. Get on with it. Get on with it. Speak up, young woman. So the rest of this class that is awake can hear the discussion that grows from this interruption."

"Sir, do you think it was morally right that President Truman made the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?"

I watched Dr. Johnston's chest expand as he swallowed a mouthful of air. His lips pursed. His hands dropped from the lectern to his sides. His shoulders slumped. He appeared to grow smaller as his usual ramrod straight posture seemed to collapse upon itself. He appeared to be looking at his notes, but he wasn't. The answer wasn't in his notes.

He raised one hand, fingers touching shirt front, tie, and eyeglass frame, as he formed his response.

"Morality. Was it moral? Was it right, in other words?" His words trailed off. His stare was at the exit doors to the hall. He was somewhere else. He was perfectly still until I noticed the slightest sway of movement. For Dr. Johnston was no longer in 1971, he had returned to September, 1945. Dr. Johnston had assumed his sea legs stance on the unsteady deck of a naval ship.

"I was on a troopship, a transport, carrying hundreds...hundreds of American boys, some of them younger than any of you in this room. We were bound for Honshu. We were headed for the home islands of Japan when we heard the war was over. Over at last. I would never carry another mother's son to die on some God forsaken piece of dirt that had no strategic or tactical value. God, the Marines. The Marines. Peleliu, Tarawa, Iwo, Okinawa. Moral? Ask the dead. If you can find them, ask the living that were on those troop transports. I can't answer your question. Each of us has to answer it. This class is dismissed."

Dr. Johnston's response is one I've heard from many sources on many issues regarding the morality of a particular decision of historical import. It is the ethical principle of utilitarianism. We can thank the likes of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill for the principle of the greatest happiness theory. It's been ages since Philosophy 101, but those names ring a distinct bell.

Yet, I also think of another professor, this one of Law. Jay Murphy was my favorite professor, though he only taught me one course--Labor Law. Professor Murphy was a Buddhist. One day he had traffic blocked on University Boulevard, bent over, hands palm out, as he looked intently down at some small object on the asphalt. It was a caterpillar. The Buddhist professor was adamant that the caterpillar would get safely where it intended to go. Even the life of a bug was precious to him. After all, given time, that caterpillar turns into a butterfly. There are two sides to every question.

So, that brings us to Kazuo Ishiguro and his acclaimed novel Never Let Me Go short listed for the Booker Prize in 2005. Turn the last page, and if you're not too stunned by the power of Ishiguro's words, you'll find that the author was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954. Although it's impossible to know the origin of an author's work, unless he has directly addressed the subject, I had to wonder if this magnificent book was Ishiguro's response to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If not that, Ishiguro does directly raise the issue of the potential of science to cross over the boundaries of morality. Or, on its most simple level, Ishiguro simply decided to turn the genre of science fiction on its ear, showing what might be accomplished in an over laden field of books, many of which should never have seen the light of day.

Ishiguro definitely surpasses that simple level. At the minimum, this is a novel that questions the morality of advancements in science and technology. At the optimum, it addresses the very issue of the use of weapons of mass destruction that in fact exist, though sometimes just can't seem to be found anywhere. Further commentary on the second war against Iraq ceases here.

It is especially difficult to review a work of this magnitude without resorting to spoilers. Where necessary, the appropriate alerts will be posted.

Ishiguro's plotting is deceptively simple, using the perspective of Kath H., a student at an exclusive boarding school, Hailsham. In three sections, spanning early student days to young adulthood, Kath tells of life at school, after graduation, and her career choice. Kath focuses on her continuing relationship with two fellow students, Tommy and Ruth.

Hailsham is an environment especially suited to enhancing creativity in their students. Whether it be painting, music, drawing, poetry, or prose, students were encouraged to create works of art. Periodically a woman known to the children only as Madame, comes to Hailsham to select works of art which leads the children to believe their work is placed in a special gallery. To have one's work selected by Madame is a coveted honor. Additionally, the children participate in exchanges of one another's art, vying for what they consider to be the best.

Kath's attention is called to Tommy because of his frequent outburst of temper. Tommy is targeted by other students for his lack of creativity and the fact they know every button to push to launch him into a fit of rage. Tommy confides in Kath, much to her discomfort, for being seen as his friend could affect her own relationship with her fellow students.

But when Tommy's behavior gradually begins to change until he exhibits no further rages, he is no longer the target of bullies. There's no challenge anymore. Tommy provides no reaction other than to shrug and walk away from his would be tormentors. Ishiguro's portrayal of bullying is masterful.

Ruth is the central figure around whom Kath and Tommy revolve. Ruth is a would be leader, a believer that each of them is special and that a special future awaits each of them because of their status as Hailsham students. Ruth is self-centered, selfish, manipulative, and a master at the art of triangulation.

As Kath, Tommy and Ruth move into later adolescence, it is Ruth who will become Tommy's sexual partner, for reasons unrelated to love for Tommy. Kath's normal sexual urges are twisted by Ruth to be evidence of abnormality, and that Tommy, whom she uncouples from, would never view Kath as a partner because of what amounted to sleeping around. Tommy will only consider her a friend, not a mate.

Ishiguro takes his title from an imaginary song, "Never Let Me Go," sung by an imaginary cabaret singer which is on a cassette tape Kath buys at one of the periodic sales held at the school, when the children are allowed to buy things with tokens earned from their creative work. In one instance that becomes central to the question of the nature of Hailsham, Kath dances to the song while holding a pillow against her, as if she were holding her own baby. She turns to find Madame standing in the doorway watching her. Tears stream from Madame's eyes. Madame rapidly turns and departs without explanation, a continuing mystery woman whose comings and goings at the school have no apparent reason to the children.

The growing horror of the fate that awaits the children of Hailsham is created by the simple straightforward delivery of Ishiguro's chosen narrator, Kath. It grows readily apparent that something waits for each student in the future.

Why do no parents ever visit at Hailsham? Why are the teachers called Guardians as opposed to teachers? Why is Hailsham located in a remote area of England with no visible traffic zipping back and forth?

At Hailsham, the children are told their fate, but not in a manner which is understood. The management of Hailsham is a network of deceit, lies and manipulation. The children have no baseline of behavior outside the walls of the school to know otherwise. The language in which the Guardians address the children is reminiscent of Orwell's "double-speak" in 1984.

"Never Let Me Go" is the most appropriate title for the song Kath loves but does not understand. It is Ishiguro's perfect title for this compelling novel. For the forces that drive Hailsham have no intention of any of its students gain freedom. Ever.

The secret of Hailsham is one of ultimate selfishness of which any society should be ashamed. No parents come to the school because each of the children is a clone. They are walking, living organ banks, raised to be donors for others. The identity of the recipient is unknown, although Kath and Tommy learn that it is a practice that is accepted by the populous of the UK. An entire nation has accepted the price of the lives of others on the premise that clones, in fact, are mere shadows of real people. The children of Hailsham were meant to be raised in the shadows. It's a fact that anonymity covers a multitude of sins. Isn't it easier to drop a bomb from an incredible height and never see the destruction on the ground, compared to hand to hand combat? It always has been. It always will. Now, a human sits at a controller, as if simply playing a video game, navigating an unmanned rocket bomb to its intended target. At quitting time, mission over, the gamer goes home to whatever life they live outside the office. Hailsham was actually an experiment to show that clones are as human as any child created from the collision of sperm and egg. That's what society doesn't want to know.

Each of us faces questions on a regular basis. Will we do something simply because we have the ability to do it? Or do we weigh the consequences of the possible against the cost of the act?

I must return to that warm spring afternoon in 1971 as I listened to Dr. Johnson. My beloved Uncle celebrated his 21st birthday at Hickham Field. He never spoke of what he saw that day. He island hopped across the Pacific. He never spoke of what he saw. In September of 1945, he was on a troop ship headed to the home islands of Japan. I've often wondered if Dr. Johnson was an officer on board that transport.

I think of Robert Oppenheimer on the morning of July 16, 1945, at the Trinity Test of the first explosion of the atomic bomb in a desolate area of New Mexico. Afterwards he said he thought of the words from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

With Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro, a man born in Nagasaki, reminds us that any action, no matter the reason, has a price. The question is, "Is it worth it?" Each of us has to answer that question.

For, Robert Johnston, Professor, Department of History, The University of Alabama; Jay Murphy, Professor of Law, The University of Alabama School of Law, Woodrow Gaskin Burke, beloved Uncle, teacher and friend, all of whom had to answer the question in his own way"

My name is Glenn S., and I’ve been a reader now for several decades. That might sound like a long time, but it’s not, really. Certainly it’s not as long as it felt getting to the end of this book.

Never Let Me Go? Believe me, I wanted to. Especially after reading yet another languorous passage about a minor squabble among students about who said what to whom or which of the half dozen interchangeable school teachers at Hailsham (Miss Lucy? Miss Emily? Miss Geraldine?) did what boring thing to the “collection,” or gave someone a sharp look, which would be revisited 10 chapters later so that you’d have to flip back to see what all the fuss was about in the first place.

I apologize for that last sentence. It’s not very Mr. Kazuo. Mr. K. writes calm, meditative, Zen-like sentences that almost put you to sleep. His idea of tension is planting little clues at the end of chapters so you keep on reading. Here is an example:

We started to walk back towards the main house then and I waited for her to explain what she meant, but she didn’t. I found out though over the next several days.

(Seriously. That’s supposed to be a cliffhanger – what one kid meant when she said that thing!) Don’t get me wrong. Mr. Kazuo’s soothing prose worked really well in his Booker-winning masterpiece, The Remains Of The Day. But it’s also because the protagonist of that book, the unreliable narrator Stevens, was a fascinating figure who had lived a lot of life, even if that life had been largely unexamined. And the book also had the undercurrents of history – and our knowledge of the past – running through the prose.

The narrator of this book, Kathy H., part of a quasi love triangle with fellow Hailsham students Ruth and Tommy, isn’t nearly as complex. But as she ages and reexamines things, she begins to understand more: about how the three of them grew up and what their destinies are in this vaguely dystopian world.

Mr. Kazuo’s themes are clear: What is a soul? What makes up a life? In the end, isn’t it things like kindness and generosity that matter?

Those themes are enough to raise my rating to a 3. But I still have some questions about the plot. (Stop here if you want to avoid spoilers.) Why didn’t the donors try to escape? It doesn’t seem like there was any patrolling of borders in this world. How exactly did the cloning program work? Could only the wealthy afford to receive clone-grown organs? If so, that would have been an intriguing comment about class. Were there other advances in technology besides the cloning? It would seem that world-building would have to be a part of writing a novel like this (see also The Handmaid’s Tale or even Ready Player One).

I believe my time is up. I will now drink some mineral water and eat some biscuits, rest a bit, and hope that my next book is better.

Very disappointing, despite a promising opening. It is a ridiculous story that is increasingly badly told. If you don't want to know the key plot point, beware of reading the back cover of some editions. :(

GENRE
Although often classed as sci-fi, I think that's more because dystopian fiction is often categorised that way, rather than anything inherently sci-fi in the book itself. In fact, it doesn't even feel dystopian for a while. In many ways, it's more of coming-of-age novel: coping with loss of innocence and accepting responsibilities.

STYLE
The narration is very conversational (which is fine).

SETTING AND PLOT
It is initially set in a co-educational English boarding school, in a country house. There are the usual friendships and fallings out, and it has children as young as 5 (maybe younger), but in many ways it seems quite idyllic. However, there is an understated menace from the outset, and the school is oddly obsessed with creativity.

The pupils' vagueness about their eventual fate perhaps shadows that of the reader. Mention is made early on about carers and donors and they are told of "people who shudder at the very thought of you - of how you were brought into the world and why", but it's only towards the end that the details are made explicit. I think I might have enjoyed the book slightly more if I'd had to work it out for myself (rather than read it on the cover).

The middle section is set in "the cottages" where the leavers go to live for a couple of years or so, and the story narrows to be more specifically about Kathy (the narrator), Ruth and Tommy. This exaggerates the contrast of the first part: they can indulge their hobbies (reading and sex, mostly), living comfortably without the need to work, but they are increasingly aware that soon things will change.

LOSING CREDIBILITY
The final section follows the three of them when they leave, and this is where the book completely lost any trace of believability for me. The underlying story is too full of holes, even within its own dystopian world. I just do not believe anyone would have the means to go to such extraordinary lengths when there are far simpler, quicker and cheaper solutions. I was reminded of this when I read Under the Skin, which is also set in an apparently normal contemporary world, but has a similarly far-fetched, overly complex, expensive and time-consuming way of solving a problem.

Also, why have carers travelling round the country to be with different donors, rather than each carer being based in one location? That is implausible and not even necessary for the story!

I was also a little surprised that they were as accepting as seemed to be the case (not totally accepting, but pretty much), but I suppose being born and raised in what was effectively a brainwashing cult is very powerful means of making people accept their fate. Any that did successfully and permanently break away would be hushed up and not necessarily mentioned in the novel.

Finally, it goes from bad to worse, with the cheap James Bond/Blofeld trick of having one character near the end explaining everything in a rush.

I have no words…that’s my review
*sobs heavily*