La mia copia ha un taglio netto verticale al centro della copertina. Non me ne sono accorta quando l'ho presa dallo scaffale, e nemmeno mi importa, ma quando ho cominciato a leggere questo libro non facevo altro che fissare quel taglio sul cartoncino, probabilmente fatto da un taglierino mentre aprivano un pacco. Non è uno strappo, è un taglio, sottile, preciso, netto, appunto.

Ecco, questa è esattamente la mia sensazione alla fine di questo libro. Mi ha lasciato un taglio da qualche parte, credo non lontano dal cuore, ma forse è più vicino alla bocca dello stomaco, e poi io non voglio sapere niente del corpo umano, tantomeno del mio, mi fa impressione.

Non sono capace di scrivere una recensione, tizio ha fatto quello, poi è successo quell'altro e alla fine mamma mia. Io so solo raccontare quello che rimane dentro di un libro o quello che mi succede mentre lo chiudo e alzo la testa e mi vengono in mente diecimila cose da dire, che poi non dico a nessuno, e qualche volta le scrivo qui e, sempre, ogni maledetta volta, sono sconclusionata.

Il libro non dice tutto (evviva) e tu rimani un po' lì nel limbo, a chiederti se hai capito bene, a chiederti come sia possibile e un po' all'inizio mi irritava non capire, io che faccio un milione di domande e voglio sempre sapere tutto. Poi l'ho lasciato condurmi dove voleva lui e, finalmente rilassata, mi ha portata in un posto meraviglioso, poco chiaro ma magnifico.

Tanto tempo fa, dormivo accanto a un uomo che mi raccontava le storie dei miti per farmi addormentare. Io poi, a tratti, mi lasciavo andare e dormivo e lui continuava e io mi svegliavo e avevo perso un pezzo ma ero estasiata dalla sua voce e dall'amore che aveva per me in quel momento. Ecco, quella cosa lì, in quel momento lì era amore. E quegli stessi momenti lì ho trovati in questo libro, verso la fine del libro, quando ormai la piega che prenderà è chiara.

Leggetelo. Non solo perché a me Ishiguro ricorda i miei vent'anni e il viso di Emma Thompson. Ma perché, qualche volta, è bello che non sia tutto chiaro, che non l'abbiate programmato e che vi lasciate trasportare dagli eventi. Niente alcol a sto giro, un buon tè inglese, bevuto in una bella tazza di porcellana e se sapete preparare degli ottimi scones, beh, sarà perfetto.

Ps se non sapete farlo, vi mando la ricetta. Ma imparate alla svelta, suvvia.

this book was not AT ALL what i expected.

from a writing standpoint, this is easily 5 stars. but overall, the story left something to be desired. i also didn’t find this to be as devastating as most people say it is. it’s objectively a sad story, but to me it was more disturbing than anything else.

no one who recommends this book ever says what it’s actually about (also i rarely read synopses), so i had no idea that this is speculative fiction and not literary fiction. so to say that i was shocked when i got to some of the more sci-fi elements would be an understatement loll

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]

n  n
Kazuo Ishiguro tells us the story of a clique of students living in the congenial atmosphere of Hailsham, an English boarding school far away from the city. Is there something flagrant or collusion happening behind the consonant nature of this school? Are the students of Hailsham different in some sort of way? The author tries to tell it through the eyes of Kathy, who was a schoolgirl who leaves the school after she grows up into a young woman. How will the products of Hailsham face the stark realities of their future? This novel explores hope and hopelessness, love and betrayal simultaneously. The author is also trying to discuss the importance of ethics in science. This novel is a conglomeration of literary fiction, science fiction, and romantic fiction.

n  What I learned from this book n
n  1) What should we do if things are not going according to our plans in our life? n
If things are not going according to our wishes, we should try hard to get things back on track. Even after we try our best, if it is still not going to our wish; then, we should learn to let it go.

"You have to accept that sometimes that's how things happen in this world. People's opinions, their feelings, they go one way, then the other. It just so happens you grew up at a certain point in this process."

"I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart."

n  2) The importance of solitude n
Everyone is so vocal about the problems of loneliness and how loneliness can lead to anxiety and depression. It is indeed an important topic that needs discussion. But most of us are forgetting about the importance of solitude. Solitude is also a vital ingredient to make a person sane, just like companionship.

n “The solitude, I've actually grown to quite like... I do like the feeling of getting into my little car, knowing for the next couple of hours I'll have only the roads, the big gray sky and my daydreams for company."

n  3) The purest form of Love n
The author tries to discuss love from multiple angles in this novel. If we try to read between the lines, we can see love from a different angle that we haven't seen anywhere else, which is unique, pristine in its purest form, and has the propensity to touch our hearts and bring tears to our eyes.

“You say you’re sure? Sure that you're in love? How can you know it? You think love is so simple? ”

n  My favourite three lines from this book n

"It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you've made, and there's this panic because you don't know yet the scale of disaster you've left yourself open to."

"Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don't go along with that. The memories I value most, I don't ever see them fading."

“It might be just some trend that came and went," I said. "But for us, it’s our life.”

n  What could have been better?n
The pace of this novel, especially in the initial part, was a little slow. This is one of those rare novels which slowly grows on you.

n  Rating n
5/5 This is a must-read book for all those who loves to read literary fiction.

بی نظیر بود
وچقدر تلخ

Never Let Me Go - my very first Kazuo Ishiguro read and certainly not the last.

This book is a work of sheer beauty in its writing. It haunts me still.n  n   

"Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading."

n  nNever Let Me Go is far from a breezy read, and it may not cater to everyone's taste. It's hard-hitting, melancholic, and atmospheric, with a pacing that is best savored slowly.



P.S. Please avoid reviews and spoilers for the best reading experience. I happen to have gone through a review that included spoilers in its very first line.

Recitesc, așadar, Să nu mă părăsești. Mi se pare și acum o carte foarte bună, chiar dacă unii au găsit-o „terifiantă”. Nu e neapărat un SF, nu este nici o carte horror (cum au catalogat-o - cam rapid - cîțiva cronicari), deși e neliniștitoare. Este mai degrabă un roman trist, foarte trist. Cineva mi-a mărturisit că a plîns la sfîrșitul cărții. Îl înțeleg:

„Iar acum eu mă aflu aici, în faţa tuturor acelor lucruri, şi dacă aştept suficient de mult, de dincolo de cîmp va apărea o siluetă micuţă, care va creşte pe măsură ce se va apropia, pînă cînd am să văd că e Tommy, iar el îmi va face cu mîna, poate chiar mă va striga. Fantezia mea nu a mers mai departe - n-am lăsat-o eu - şi, deşi lacrimile începuseră să mi se prelingă pe obraji, nu plîngeam în hohote şi nu îmi pierdusem complet cumpătul. Am aşteptat puţin, apoi m-am întors la maşină ca să pornesc mai departe, indiferent care era locul unde trebuia să ajung” (p.323).

Faptul cel mai ciudat din romanul lui Ishiguro este că „donatorii-clone” sînt liberi. Dar ei își asumă condiția ca și cum ar fi o fatalitate. Ishiguro a scris un roman despre condiția umană (omul ca ființă înrobită) și despre fragilitatea iubirii, cînd îți accepți soarta fără un singur murmur...

P. S. Pe o idee înrudită, Klara și soarele mi-a plăcut mult mai puțin...

این داستان هم عاشقانه هست و هم نیست ، هم تخیلی هست و هم نیست . نویسنده چنان با مهارت فضای غم زده هیلشم را توصیف می کند و با چنان مهارتی کلام در دهان شخصیت های داستان میگذارد که
نتیجه آن کتابی میشود سرشار از شگفتی و داستانی که خواننده را رها نمی کند . دیالوگهای پینگ پونگی بین شخصیت های داستان که اوایل تا اندازه ای از سرنوشت خود آگاه هستند و اواخر هر کاری برای فرار یا به تعویق انداختن آن انجام می دهند . چیرگی قلم جناب ایشی گوروو در مجسم کردن محیط به قدری ایست که زمانی که فیلم آن را (که خود اثر نازلی ایست از این کتاب ) دیدم منظره ها به نظرم آشنا میامد !شخصیت پردازی هم به قدر کافی محکم است و ایراد چندانی نمیشود از آن گرفت


اما نکته ای که تازه به ذهنم رسید اینه که شاید زندگی انسانهای واقعی در یک آرمانشهر داره می گذره که حتی برای بیماری و شاید مرگ هم به راه حل رسیدن . اما به چه قیمتی ؟
اینجا هم مثله دنیای واقعی شاهدیم که دست یابی به آرمان شهر مستلزم بی عدالتی و جفا و فجایع فراونی ایست

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.

First, I loathe the scenario when serious literary authors write science fiction. Though in their hands it's always Speculative fiction. Almost universally, one has to then hear the hosannas of the mainstream critics hailing this work as if others haven't been writing in this genre for years.

So I admit a bias, but this book's awfulness goes far beyond that.

It's simply unbelievable. The fact that these people live in the world and somehow remain utterly oblivious to their situation well into their 30's. That they undergo what they undergo, and do so willingly, and yet are free to move about the country with nary a thought of just checking out is imbecilic.

More damningly, It's inhuman.

Ishiguro's gives the characters a fantasy about deferrals and love but somehow never gives them the idea of freedom or rebellion, even though they study art and literature voluminously.

Never Let Me Go is the worst kind of sci-fi bc it take one idea and looks at it under a microscope, forgoing how this one idea is going to effect the rest of the world, but in Ishiguro's defense he never examines the rest of the world. He can't bc his asinine idea would fall apart.

Real world example. Gutenberg creates printing press. Books become available to the masses. The Bible can be read by many instead of a few. Martin Luther decides his reading of the Bible is closer to God's truth than the Papists. People are stirred up by this interpretation and then many leaflets that are put out in defense of the failed monk. Wars ensue - the Enlightenment occurs.

In Ishiguro's world, Gutenberg makes the printing press and all that happens is people devote their lives to printing books. End of story.

The book is barely two characters and one is so naive that she quickly becomes tiring, but then again the author needs her to be child-like bc anyone would start asking a whole lot of questions long before any get asked.

This is a story of growing up in a boarding school, making friends, experiencing triumphs and suffering disappointments. That sounds like it could be my story or yours, but it’s different. Kathy H. is different, and so are her friends. They’ve each been given a role to play in society, and the details of that role, that dreadful role, unfold slowly over the course of the novel.

The pace is slow and the story is subtle, so I can see why it doesn’t appeal to everyone. But for me, the writing was like music. The simple words flowed and I was transported--carried off and in the end returned changed in some indescribable way.

I kept thinking of Mozart’s Requiem as I read.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPlhK...
It is a devastating piece of music, to the point you almost want to turn it off, but it’s so beautiful that you have to keep listening. This story was like that for me.

Despite the deeply disturbing storyline, what I found most haunting was the way Ishiguro gives his characters universal feelings. For example:
“'I can see,’ Miss Emily said, ‘that it might look as though you were simply pawns in a game. It can certainly look like that. But think of it. You were lucky pawns. There was a certain climate and now its gone...’

‘It might be just some trend that came and went,’ I said. ‘But for us, it’s our life.’”

We all sometimes feel that life is meaningless, that we are just pawns in a game that someone else controls. We’re just another patient with a troubling disease, or another student who doesn’t pass the class. Our feelings are ignored, but to us they are of utmost importance. We can all relate to this frustration.

Kazuo Ishiguro is a very special writer. Even though it is a completely different story, this book felt so much like The Remains of the Day. Why? I think it’s that they both explore something we are terrified of: loss. The Remains of the Day is the story of a time and place, but it is primarily about a character that loses something. He loses his chance. Never Let Me Go is also this kind of story. It is of a time and place, fortunately a not (yet) real place, but it is about a character who loses something. What she loses is something she never got to have. Mr. Stephens and Kathy H. may not be aware of what they have lost, but we the readers are, and when we inhabit them and experience their loss, it’s shattering.

I always try to read a book before seeing a movie, but with these two Ishiguro stories, I saw the movie first. I don’t know if that makes a difference. When I saw the movies, they felt like a sort of postcard of a place I wanted to know more about--I was intrigued and haunted. Reading the books was like going there, and the haunting turned to heartbreak.

Are his other stories similar? Can I handle another experience like this? Can I resist?

It's very important, if you're intending to read this book, that you don't read any reviews or listen to any talk about it first. I had no idea what this book was about before I read it - and the blurb gives you a very different impression, actually - and so I slipped easily into a story that was as engrossing as it was revealing.

If you know something about what to expect, though, I don't think you'll enjoy it nearly as much. It's a bit like an art installation that requires audience participation: you have to do your bit, too, to make it work, so it makes sense, so it tells the story it was meant to tell. Keep yourself in the dark, that's my advice. Because of this, there's no point in writing an actual review.