أتمنى أن تهتم أحد دور النشر أو المترجمين بترجمة هذه الرواية الرائعة للكاتب البريطاني كازو ايشيجورو
رواية حزينة تدور أحداثها في إطار خيالي قائم على فكرة الاستنساخ
ذكريات تحكيها الراوية كاثي, تبدأ في مدرسة داخلية في الريف الانجليزي
يركز الكاتب على ثلاث شخصيات, كاثي واتنين من أصدقاءها
من الطفولة وحتى الشباب بعد انتقالهم من المدرسة لعالم الواقع
وبالتدريج يبدأ في كشف حقيقة وجودهم ومصيرهم
بأسلوب جميل يحكي عن مشاعرهم وأفكارهم وردود أفعالهم المختلفة
والعلاقة المتغيرة بينهم ما بين الحب والصداقة, الغيرة والندم والغضب
حياة تبدو عادية لكنها غير انسانية تنقضي تدريجيا في انتظار مؤلم للنهاية

سرد يتناول بين سطوره إشارات عن الإشكاليات العلمية والأخلاقية
تصنيف البشر الذي يتحكم فيه الأقوى علميا وماديا
معاملة الجسد كمجرد سلعة تفقد قيمتها بانتهاء الصلاحية
الاستغلال بكافة أشكاله في العالم, والعلم بين الجانب المادي والانساني
وأثر المعرفة والفهم في تشكيل الوعي, والقدرة على الاختيار أو الاستسلام

I knew nothing about this book before reading it, and I recommend everyone doing the same. There are so many childish comments in the review section that make awful summary of this book.
Just read it, and you will know why Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize in Literature even if you don’t like the book.

I can see  Never Let Me Go being great for book clubs because it will generate a lot of discussion.

That being said, I didn't care for the book, for a couple of different reasons. The writing style is very conversational -- very much like you're having a discussion with the protagonist. The thing that annoyed me the most about this was the fact that the things that happened (so bob and I went walking to the store and we had a fight about the tree at school) and then the writer would tell you about the tree and why it was significant, then tell you about the fight. This sort of device is interesting the first few times you see it, but it started to annoy me over time. Maybe because I talk like that, and get off into tangents and anecdotes.

Also, at the heart of the store is the purpose/fate of the main characters. I get the impression that the author wanted to drop clues about it, and then reveal it so that it is a shocking twist (who's Kaiser Soeze? ;) The thing is, the references really aren't that subtle, so by the time the twist is reavealed, it's not all that exciting. Not only that, but I had so many questions at the end. Like -- these people know their fate, but they never think to question it, and, in fact, seem to be glad for it.

This was supposed to be a coming of age story. Generally "coming of age" involves people growing up and moving forward with their lives; often they need to overcome some obstacle to reveal their potential. However, the characters seem to be stagnate the whole way through; their fate doesn't change. The blurb on the back of the book mentions that the characters, Kathy, Ruth and Tommy, all have a shared background that's special, and implies that they're lucky. When two of the charaters confront someone to see if they can defer their fate (they don't even bother trying to change it), we find out a little bit of what makes their shared background special, but we aren't given anything to compare it to (we're just told that similar people have horrible existences, but not how). And they find out that they can't defer their fate, but they don't really seem to care; they don't even seem to be particularly glad that they tried.

I've seen a couple of reviews compare this to book to Aldous Huxley's classic "Brave New World" and Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale". Not even close. In both of these books we're exposed to an alternate reality, and we see how the main characters deal with their situations. Kazuo Ishiguro tries to sneak the alternate reality into the story, to take us by surprise.

I could go on, but I won't. Let's just say that I didn't care for this book and leave it at that.

I'll admit, reading a book that you love for the second time is a scary thing. I read Never Let Me Go for the first time 2 and a half years ago, and I loved it. I read it within 24 hours on a vacation, and it whisked me away from that trip I was on, taking me to 1990's England, and into the lives of these children growing up and learning the harsh reality of their world. But it also reminded me of the beauty of friendship, the complicated nature of relationships, the importance of art, and most importantly, the power of words on a written page to instill emotion.

Now, the second time reading this book, I will admit there were some writing techniques that threw me, that I didn't recognize or at least didn't bother me the first time. I also saw some of the characters in totally different lights. Ruth seems like a terrible person, and yet this reading, 2 and a half years later, had me sympathizing with her so much more. Tommy & Kath's relationship didn't move me as much as I remember. But one thing that didn't change about this book for me is how much I love it.

I love the creativity behind it. I love Ishiguro's ability to give away so much by sharing so little. I love the tone this book has, one I will continue to describe as flipping through an old, faded photo album. It's musty and opaque, yet there's a candidness to it that I adore. Ishiguro doesn't shy away from the darker parts of the world. But he is able to approach these subjects from a perspective that offers relatability and insight that is hard to recreate. It's a simple story from the perspective of a simple woman, and still it touches on so much of the complexity of human existence. A book I will return to again and again, and one that keeps me thinking event after finishing it. 5/5 stars

I had previously avoided this book, having heard it referred to as British science fiction. And when I hear "British science fiction," I think of Dr. Who. Then I think about all those childhood snuff film fantasies where Captain Kirk zaps him. (Phasers set to kill, dammit! Inter-dimensional traveling dandies in phone booths are the exception to Federation regulations. What is it about the British, anyway? A phone booth? That's Superman's bag, baby. Superhero envy much? The sun may have never set on the British Empire, but we Yankees have a guy who can fly faster than the speed of light.) But then I found myself alone in a big bookstore in a big city trying to divine what the angelic face on the book's cover was looking askance at (itself manipulated, no doubt, like the fictional clones whose story it was fashioned to sell) and thinking of Kurosawa's definition of art being about the ability to look at humanity in its entirety without flinching.

Mulligan. I flinched.

But Kazuo Ishiguro hasn't. And he doesn't think much of me. Or you. And he's probably correct in that judgment.

Imagine the most genteel, tea-sipping people gathered around fine china in a flowery patterned drawing room somewhere in the English countryside. A shaft of midday sun shines through drawn curtains as they politely discuss the day's happenings. Then imagine Leatherface, Jack the Ripper, Lex Luther, Sarah Palin and Michael Jackson's dad ransacking everything around them, starting at the furthest perimeters of the house, slowly working their way toward our happy people and ultimately cannibalizing them. Then imagine both groups acting as if this is completely normal. Nary a word of protest or questioning, mind you.

That's what this book is like to me.

It was very difficult to read, in the psychological sense of "read." The pathos was too overwhelming. I had to take a break from it, about two-thirds of the way through. I tried to tell myself that it was because I had read the bulk of it as I was hidden away in some claustrophobic hotel room, or that I found the prose tedious at times. In truth, though, it succeeds in shining a light on human nature, and I just couldn’t bear to look.

The story made me uncomfortable, and I hated myself for returning to it after having put it aside. I was irked by the characters, my inner-Kirk screaming, "SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING!" The lethargic creepiness made me realize that no, not only was nobody going to do anything, but that neither I, nor you, nor any of us, are all that different from the people who harvest these poor souls for their organs. After all, I'm a fat and happy first-worlder who less and less has a care or thought for all those who are exploited to make my life possible.

We homo sapiens adapt to anything and hang our hats on the most contorted and worn rationalizations.

I would grind my teeth and ask, "Where is their Marx? Their Malcolm X?" Fuck, I'd have settled for Stalin or Benedict Arnold. But maybe the revolutionary gene had been isolated and bred out of their clone bodies -- a distinct possibility, owing to the imperfect knowledge of the first-person narrator. What's worse is that whereas science may have manipulated them to be docile, we, all of us, have been likewise manipulated by the inertia of history.

As I have written, I grew tired with what I saw as tedious prose, the catalog of details about everyday life cited by the narrator. But then it dawned on me that this cataloging is exactly the sort of thing a dying person would do. Life would take on more urgency. What you and I may take for granted is pregnant with wonder to the condemned. In fact, happy serendipity, this view is supported by a study cited in the November 2009 issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin -- researchers have found that those who profess to be in love are more analytical. And what is someone condemned to die other than someone in love with life?

I winced at Ishiguro's condemnation of liberal half-measures in the face of social norms. The narrator and her group of friends are raised in an almost "humane" manner -- educated, encouraged to cultivate personal friendships with one another, encouraged to pursue art. And while they represent the exception, an experiment to demonstrate that clones have souls, they are condemned nonetheless. All the petty jealousies and transcendent friendships that framed their short, beautiful lives, are consumed by larger society. And while there is never a mention of God, the closest they come is looking up a former instructor who is only mildly repulsed by them and who bids them eat from the Tree of Complete Knowledge.

Repeat after me: I am pathetic. I am powerless.

Kirk, succumbing to the Borg after all.

I read this book when it was first released and really loved it. I haven't finished an Ishiguro novel in years so it was really a delight to come back to it. I had forgotten basically everything except the basic premise of the book and I was so utterly wrapped up in it: his delicate prose, his eccentric narrator, the sadness that permeates the book but never seems to be fully felt. Ishiguro is, of course, a master of deep yet restrained emotion, but I had forgotten it in this book. I believe that when this book got relatively popular that my memory filled in the gaps I couldn't remember from my experience with it with assumptions about what it must be like. And of course it isn't like that at all.

Read #3 Update: I can't say I recommend reading this book while the world is burning down. Instead of it feeling sad, as it did in my prior two reads, I found that the book became not about the kind of nostalgia I'd read in it earlier but about futility. A futility that Kathy doesn't even realize. A futility and passivity that she has taken on to survive and oh boy, thinking about the way your brain shuts down to get through horrifying things, that's a lot to take on in our current moment.

It is a pity that people are told this is a science fiction book before they read it. I feel the least interesting thing about it is that it is science fiction. I mean this in much the same way that the least interesting thing one could say about 1984 is that it is science fiction. As a piece of literature I enjoyed it much more than Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and even more than Huxley's Brave New World.

The themes that make this book most interesting are to do with the social alienation of groups of people on the basis of inherited genetic characteristics. In fact, as a critique of racism this book is utterly brilliant. Those being racially alienated are genetically identical (they are in fact clones) to those attacking them.

Plato believed those 'in the know' should tell lies to those 'who do not know' so as to protect them from the all too horrible truths about life. I have always hated this aspect of Plato, always finding it grotesque and frightening in its implications. Those implications are drawn out in all their disturbing horror here.

This book has much to say about the nature of 'illness' and how those inflicted with an 'illness' use the scars of that illness as the badges of truly belonging to the group. So that those 'less advanced' in the ravages of the illness don't really know or really belong to the group. As a portrait of victims adopting to being victims it says much about us as humans - thoughtful readers may find it says far too much. I write this on World Aids Day.

Ishiguro writes the most nightmarish novels I've ever read. In others, such as The Unconsoled or When We Were Orphans the nightmare feeling is due to the dreamlike oddity of the interconnection of events in the story. One reads these books in much the same way that one wakes from a disturbing dream, with feelings of disorientation and anxiety. Even though this is the most literal 'nightmare book' of his I have read - the world he creates being literally a nightmare, and made all the worse by being set in the recent past - it is a book totally lacking in that strange dreamlike quality so characteristic of these other novels. In this sense it seemed less of a nightmare than these others. If you struggled with these, you will not struggle with this in quite the same way.

He also has fascinating and quite painful things to say about the nature of love and how love has a proper time, a time that may be lost or missed. As someone who has loved, lost and missed I found this particularly challenging. The relationship between sex and love and illness is perhaps something people may find simply too much - not because this is handled in any way that is too explicit, but because I do believe we like to think that sex, as a manifestation of love, has curative and redemptive powers. A book that questions this, questions something we hold very dear and some readers may find this too much to ask.

This is also a book about betrayal. The betrayals we commit against those we love the most and yet that we barely can understand or explain after we have committed them - these are constant throughout the book. He is a writer all too aware of the human condition. The scene which gives the book its title is a wonderful example of the near impossibility of our being understood by others and yet our endless desire for just such an understanding.

There is nothing easy about reading this book - although it is written in the simplest of prose. It has an honesty of feeling that brands one's soul.

I loved this book and have thought about it a lot since I finished reading it and will think about it more. There is much more I would like to say, but there is no space. May we all be good carers before we complete.

You know those random stock characters in sci-fi/action movies, the ones who never get names or any lines? They're always spending their precious few minutes of screen time getting shoved out of the way as the hero hurtles desperately down a hallway, or watching from a safe distance as a climactic fight goes on, or diving out of the way whenever a murderous cyborg smashes through their office window. Have you ever wondered what those people's lives were like? Have you ever thought to yourself, "Man, this movie's interesting and all, but I want to know more about that guy who owned the hotel where Sarah Conner hid from the Terminator. I bet he leads a fascinating life." (believe me, he doesn't.)

Imagine if someone decided to write a book about this kind of person. The result is Never Let Me Go.

(semi-spoilers ahoy, you've been warned) So the book is about a sort of alternate-universe England, where people are cloned and the resulting kids are raised in isolated boarding schools, spending all their time painting and playing sports and getting vague hints about how when they get older they'll have to make "donations." We learn (eventually and with no drama whatsoever) that these kids were created specifically as future organ donors, and that's all they're meant for. Ishiguro introduces us to Kathy, the narrator, and her friends who lived at one of these schools with her - Ruth and Tommy. As I said, we gradually and laboriously learn about the school's real purpose, but it seems almost like a subplot, because the majority of the book is just Kathy nattering on about her school and how she and Ruth got into a fight this one time and also she had a crush on Tommy but he and Ruth were dating so Kathy had sex with some other random guys and oh my god can we get back to the organ donor thing? Seriously the whole book is like that - we get the sense that there's some creepy futuristic stuff going on in the background, but our protagonists don't care because they're too busy telling us about that one time Kathy lost her favorite cassette tape and it was very upsetting.

Even when it seems like a plot's about to start, it's always a false alarm. The trip to a nearby town that the three characters take to find a woman they think may be Ruth's "possible" (a person she may have been cloned from) doesn't pan out, and we realize that the real point of the trip was an attempt to convince the reader that Tommy and Kathy have some sort of romantic attraction to each other. Ruth's possible, and everything it might have meant, is abandoned so that Ishiguro can have another chance to demonstrate his astonishing inability to create any kind of chemistry between two characters.

And the end. Without giving anything away, I'll just say that Kathy and Tommy finally get all the answers about their school and what was actually going on, and they respond by...going about their lives in the exact same way as before.

I mean, good God. Even though this is supposed to be some sort of more intellectual science fiction, I don't care. There's cloning and dystopian undertones; ergo it is sci-fi. And I like my sci-fi loud, shiny, and dramatic, with lots of explosions and computers that talk.

There's a reason Harry Potter starts when he gets his Hogwarts letter, folks. Because no one wants to hear about ordinary people being ordinary - that's kind of the whole point of fiction.

I’m not sure why... There is something languid and at the same time shadowy about Ishiguro’s prose that reminds me of Franz Schubert. Something at once elegant and tense, lyrical and anguished, crystalline and autumnal. In the end, I confess that this novel moved me deeply.

It is not at once obvious what the story is about. It is composed in the form of a memoir, written by a young woman, Kathy H., who looks back on her experiences as a child and, later on, as a teenager in an outlying boarding school, somewhere in England. She recounts several episodes involving her closest friends, most of them around minute events: a hand brushing against another, some kids’ artwork, a stark warning against smoking, a lost music tape, a teacher weeping, a scratched elbow, some dirty magazines, how some of the students give each other a pat, some causal sex, some inappropriate comments, etc.

Yet, underneath all these minutiae, the narrator lets us feel that there is always something unsaid, troubling and strange. In many ways, Ishiguro’s book also echoes Atwood’s The Handmaid's Tale and that feeling of confusion and unease, but with a softer, low-key tone. Each chapter is built around one of these tiny events going on in this crooked little world, so that the mystery and suspense slowly build up, but we will hardly know what dark secret lies beneath it all until practically the very ending of the novel. A devastating, revolting reveal which is exposed in an almost pensive, resigned yet hopeless manner. It all comes down to a tragic tale about destiny and what it means to be mortal. Something like an impromptu by Franz Schubert...

Last night I dreamt I went to Hailsham again—oh wait, wrong book. Ishiguro discussing porn—check—but still my least favorite of his books. More so than any of other book I've read by him, literally nothing happens. Which is not always a bad thing, but in this one I felt I needed some stakes.

People tend to look back on childhood with the opinion that the things they laughed about, and cried about, and feared, were silly—they were children, and then they grew up. But this isn't the case with Kathy H. Looking back, her childhood seems to be full of significance and hidden meaning, almost to the point of obsession—she often digresses for several pages only to return with 'back to what I was saying.' I kept reading, however, because there was something always nagging, and I kept turning the pages even though I wasn’t exactly sure why, hoping that there would be some sort of payoff at the end—it never came. Ishiguro does widen the lens near the conclusion of the book, letting us know why we're supposed to care about any of this in the larger scheme of things, but by then it is almost too late. It felt as if what could have been a much shorter book has been dragged out to fill pages. It's supposed to be a sort of love story, but I was never entirely convinced. Axl and Beatrice in The Buried Giant have much more going for them than Tommy and Kathy ever did.

You know that moment in the animated The Jungle Book, when Kaa sings Trusssst in meee? Well, I did it. I trusted, and trusted, but my trust is definitely beginning to wane (I know, I know, he won the Booker, and the Nobel Prize—how dare I utter such blasphemy). I prefer his earlier work.

I loved this novel not so much for its gothic darkness, but for the questions it raised. It seems chillingly plausible that any cruelty, carried on long enough, will be accepted as the norm by humanity-especially if it benefits the majority (like providing an endless supply of organs). We manage this by dehumanising the victims. India's untouchables and America's slaves are just two of the examples. Even when we, as "enlightened" human beings, look back in disgust at such historical injustices, shouldn't we ask ourselves the question: "Am I any different?" I constantly do, and am frightened by the answer sometimes...

The writing of the novel is weak compared to "Remains of the Day", and the main plot device (art and literature providing evidence for the "soul") is rather trite, but Ishiguro must be congratulated in creating a future which is a dystopia only from the main protagonists' point of view, and drawing us into the same and making us feel the horror. The novel is science fiction in a sense, and gothic in another, but I would hesitate to include it under either category because ultimately it addresses the ephemeral nature of human existence from the viewpoint of a doomed character, and thus grows beyond any genre categorisation.

I would recommend it wholeheartedly to any lover of serious literature.

The first note I want to make about this book is to clarify from the Publisher's Summary that it is not an "edge-of-your seat mystery." I wouldn't even factor the mystery element of this story into deciding whether or not you want to read it.

The primary categorization I'd use is Dystopian. I must admit that when I picked it up, I was looking forward to a dark & mysterious tale, and that isn't altogether what I got from this book so I can't help but feel let down in some ways. I am hoping that by mentioning this point from the get go I can save someone else from that potential disappointment.

Never Let Me Go is a sequence of memories, as told by 31-year-old Kath, about her time at an English private school, Hailsham. This book raises some interesting ideas about autonomy & morality, but I also found myself having some feelings about the modern meat industry. It's hard to explain the relevance of these themes without spoiling specific points of the story, but suffice it to say each theme is communicated with a subtlety that I think worked well for the book.

But that being said, the most eerie thing about this book is how the characters being affected never rail against the system that's oppressing them. There's no "aha" moment, no rebellion, no outrage. There's no satisfaction of knowing that the system has been toppled & that things will change after the conclusion. There's a bit of hang wringing, some muttered disappointment, but most of all there is a quiet acceptance.

The characters we often look up to in Dystopian tales are the ones who sacrifice life & limb to dismantle their society's flawed ideas about social justice. These are the characters we rally behind & support even when the odds seem insurmountable. Those aren't the characters you will find here.

By the end, there isn't even an outright condemnation of the Dystopian set up. It's left up to the reader to decide how their own morality applies to the situation.

That's what makes it so scary to read.

One of things I really enjoyed is Ishiguro's writing style. His flow is graceful & the diary entry style language is very relatable. Often times it felt like I was listening to a close friend tell me about her life.

However, there is a quirk about Kath's storytelling that got on my nerves a bit. It has to do with the way she repeatedly uses a certain phrasing structure in order to build up tension before she reveals a plot point. It's something along the lines of "...until what happened a couple weeks later" or "...until I said what I said next," after which she proceeds to explain the thing.

This method may have been more powerful if I found Kath's individual stories as interesting or dramatic as that lead up suggests, but unfortunately I just didn't. In fact, I felt somewhat underwhelmed with the actual content of her memories. It's not to say that they were boring, I just never felt 100% engaged with Kath or with the development of her relationships.

Ishiguro did well creating an ominous atmosphere & the overarching conflict was unique enough for me to need to see it through. But I never fell in love with this book. It was fine, but I'm looking forward to watching the film now that I've read the book. I believe a talented cast of actors with the proper direction could create a more compelling final product with this Dystopian idea.