Never Let Me Go
Ratings882
Average rating3.8
I really liked the writing but the subject content is one that makes me quite uneasy
If you're into coming-of-age stories, sci-fi, and arts and crafts, this is your jam!
Kathy is “carer” telling the story of her childhood. She was raised at a special school where everything's a bit different, and the students are prepared for the specific future that's laid out for them. It isn't exactly a mystery; students are told what will happen to them, and we readers figure it out early in the story. But even so, there's a lot hidden in the shadows.
Ishiguro is a master storyteller with prose and character development that makes me envious. It's a simple story about innocence, whether the ends justify the means, and what it means to live a fulfilling life, but despite its simplicity, the writing draws you in.
One of the best novels I've read in recent years.
This was faultless and enthralling, touching on what makes us human, the social bonds and hierarchies we construct, the ethics of scientific advancement, art, love, hope, and what it means to live. Ishiguro explores these themes with a wistful and alluring spirit through his expertly crafted characters, namely the intimate and intelligent narration by Kathy and her nuanced relationships with Ruth and Tommy.
It is not altogether clear what the novel is about from the beginning. Structured like something of a memoir, the reader is made to slowly piece together this world through a series of anecdotes provided by Kathy as she reflects on her upbringing within a program for other students of her kind. We sense that something about this world is strange and troubling, and somehow it feels nostalgic and tender, with a candid yet ambiguous tone. It was at once devastating and mesmerising. It was perfect.
This book will sit with you for a very long time. It is so masterfully written and drives you into an existential crisis of humanity. It will force you to question your morals.
As with other books written by Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go is from the perspective of a first person narrator, Kathy. And you will either love her or hate her.
That it is a book that can be so relevant to society is the reason it has automatically jumped up in my Top 10 greatest books of all time. I implore that you read this book.
This book has an interesting concept and poses a lot of intriguing questions about life and creativity. I only wish I'd latched onto it more.
The story follows Kathy as she reflects on her life and relationships at the Hailsham boarding school. In this ultimate universe, people like Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy are lumped in these ‘schools' as they were created with one purpose in mind — to be organ donors.
I'd call this light sci-fi, which I do like, I just found the pacing to be too slow (a similar issue I had with The Remains of the Day). There was also a glaring lack of world-building. Without a lot of context, I struggled to connect to the characters and the universe.
I'm not sure how I feel after reading this. I loved The Remains of the Day a ton, and I expected to like this one even more because of the added sci-fi layer to Ishiguro's writing. Instead, I feel a little cheated and let down; while the writing and story were certainly very good, it just didn't hit the same way for me as The Remains of the Day did.
Briefly (as there's many other much longer reviews here to peruse for detailed plot points), the story is written from two points: Kathy later in life as a “carer”, and Kathy early in life as a student at Hailsham boarding school. From the beginning hints are dropped from both points in time that something off-kilter is going on with the kids at Hailsham, and whatever that something is followed these students even after they left the school. We follow Kathy as she reminisces about her time at Hailsham and after, about the relationships she developed primarily between Tommy, Ruth, and herself, and how they developed and changed over the years, shadowed the entire way by the “something” hanging over them all.
I liked the first third of the book the best, when the kids were still at Hailsham and it felt like a reader-driven detective story in figuring out what all the hints dropped by the author meant. It honestly didn't take much, there's enough dropped to basically put the puzzle together fairly quickly, but I was led along the way in how the characters would react when they figured it out, and what would happen as a result. This was where I was primarily let down, and was also one of my biggest annoyances about the book: none of the players in this story felt like they had emotions at all about what they were revealing along the way. No curiosity, no “huh, that's weird”, no real drive to learn more. Mild ending feeling spoilers (no details): even when the author finally gets around to “the big reveal” far later in the book than felt necessary, the characters accepted it, talked about it briefly, and then the book ends. It felt incredibly anticlimactic.
It's a fine book and I can see why people rated it how they did, but ultimately it felt like a miss to me. Certainly interesting discussion questions are raised, but there's so much detachment felt by the main characters that it's hard for me as a reader to really get invested in questions that won't be answered or addressed.
I'd been meaning to read this for years. Decades, maybe? I was very engrossed at the beginning. I love stories where we just find ourselves in a world that functions differently from ours, but the author/narrator assumes that we already know as much as they do, so we have to figure things out from little clues and throwaway comments. So the first third of the book was really interesting in that respect. Around the middle, though, when the pacing never changed, and things just continued being unexplained, I got a bit weary of it. Then towards the end my interest returned a bit... but there is never any climax or change of pace or anything like that. It's a quiet book, just one person's reflections on her life, and there's no big reveal or plot twist or anything like that. I wish we had found out a bit more about certain things, especially how the donations worked. But Ishiguro was obviously going for more of a “slice of life” story (based on very unusual lives which were normal for the people living them).
I don't really know what to say about this book. I guess it just wasn't for me?
Narratively, I did not care for it; all the jumping back and forth between the present and the past was confusing for me. But that is me and my personal struggle to comprehend stories told in this way - most probably will have no issue.
As for the characters, the plot, the theming, I found it very flat, dull, and predictive. I'm usually not one to guess the ending of anything early on, but for this one, it just seemed glaringly obvious from the first few chapters.
I liked the author's way of phrasing and especially descriptions, but overall I was just quite bored all the way through.
I wish I was a bit more attached to the characters, liked the writing style a bit more, maybe just a bit more and I could have found an attachment to this like I have with Ishiguro's other novels. But still, I really liked it. the bits with adult Kathy felt a bit too juvenile at points, but that's alright; they're still young, far too young for what's happened to them. The scene with Miss Emily towards the end is fucking peak.
The perfect companion to Klara and the Sun!
Contains spoilers
Random stuff for the first three paragraphs.
I watched the film made after this book and all I could think after watching it was 'the book has to be so much better' and I had this impulse to put the book I am currently reading on hold and read this one. So I logged into my online library account and started listening to it. And I was right, the book is so much better.
Now, I listened to it at something like 1.75x speed because I both wanted to get back to my other book and also just wanted the confirmation that Never Let Me Go is as good as I guessed it would be. And, well, third, because when I already know what's going to happen in a book I can't read it like I would without knowing anything at all (I am the type of reader who doesn't even check out the synopsis, I go by author and genre alone, sometimes only genre).
I previously only read two other books by Kazuo Ishiguro and I liked both of them. I had also planned to read some more of his books so this was a perfect opportunity.
I enjoyed the book, I think it's amazing how one can come up with an idea like this, but also how unsurprising it feels. Would humans do something like this? Definitely, I have no doubt that if they could, some of them would jump at the chance.
Kathy's story is both heartbreaking and not. What happens is unfair, certainly, but she's resigned. Maybe resigned is not the right word, she simply doesn't know anything else. She was brought up into a certain reality, it's been ingrained into her, and the others, that this is what they are supposed to do. Which is not incorrect, technically, but it is also not right.
I understand why none of them rise any serious questions, why they don't try and escape, but at the same time I'm wondering why not a single one of them tried to escape, out of all the students. There sure should have been someone to at least try it. But if someone did, would Kathy hear of it? And the truth is we don't know how well thought and controlled the whole programme is.
I'm not surprised at the lack of 'is it ethical or not' discussion. Again, Kathy, and the others, simply don't know enough to ask these questions. And since they don't know, who was in the right here? Miss Emily or Miss Lucy? Which way would have been better?
There are so many questions left after reading the book, and it also made such an impression on me, it sneaked into my dreams at night. Never Let Me Go sure is a thought provoking book and that makes it a great book to me.
Beetje teleurgesteld in de Nederlandse vertaling, maar een mega goed verhaal. Ergens een beetje mystiek geschreven, wat ik wel waardeer. Verder makkelijk geschreven, in een soort vertel taal, maar toch met aparte onnodige moeilijke termen hier en daar. Past er niet altijd even goed bij, maar dat kan ook aan de vertaling liggen. Is een keertje wat anders; aanrader!
It's dangerous to reminisce. There are so many ways to get trapped in the past: “if only I had...”; “things were so much better then...”; and we all know people stuck in their imaginary what-ifs. Then there's reading someone else's reminiscences—there's so much that can go wrong there. In the right hands, though: wow. This was a masterpiece that kept me engaged and thinking; it will likely stay with me for a long time.
If you haven't read this, and are over forty: read it. Don't try to learn “what it's about,” don't read cover-jacket blurbs: this isn't a book ”about” anything, it's a journey; one in which you might find more than a handful of parallels with lives you recognize. Including perhaps your own. Ishiguro's language and insights are sublime. Most importantly for me, the narrator's voice was so perfect: he could've made her wistful, or bitter, or resentful. There is drama and cruelty in the story, both individual and societal. Loss and longing. It could've gone many ways, but what I got from it is a reminder, both sobering and refreshing, that this is the life we have. We can reflect usefully on our growth: the insecurities we had (and may still carry), how our unspoken assumptions wreck the possibility of communicating with others. The narrator's life has been set on a course that is likely harder than yours or mine, yet her voice is one of curiosity, thoughtfulness, never self-pity. She thinks back to choices and decision points, understanding that things may have gone differently, and she moves on. I suppose most of us wonder, from time to time, if we're wasting or have wasted our lives. We may never know, and some days it may feel more like it than others, but even in the deepest pits we still have some agency to do our best. Few of us will have the lives we've dreamed, but we can still make something out of what we have.
Perhaps it was a bit too flat and too patched up with melancholy. Yet the melancholy was not in a flat but perturbing manner that got through the soul. That is in such way, I found the novel not sufficing my expectation or any kind of sadness that would feed me well.
To be frank, the story itself was fine, and there were obviously layers to the rendition of the world that the novel was based on. The basic settings and social backgrounds were revealed in a natural manner with the utmost simplicity in language, to which throughout the book was the narration of it. Yet it could not be so relatable, this sadness, in itself was in disguise but notable, just as paradoxical as the ugly truth of what the students' lives were set out to be, and how they were “sheltered” to be in Hailsham. It was fine, it really was, perhaps I was all too young to understand the magic of it. But again I could not relate to or feel the emotions as much as the characters did.
feel like i read the novelization of a movie rather than a full novel that might later be trimmed to fit the two hour run time of a movie. a decent read, but where was the part that was supposed to make me give a shit about anything that was going on?
This is my first Kazuo Ishiguro book, but it probably will not be my last. The writing is exceptional, and the topics and themes explored are thought provoking and relevant. This dystopian fiction definitely left me feeling uncomfortable and questioning some of societies ideas, which is exactly what good dystopian literature should do.
The story is told from the perspective of Kathy, who grew up in a idyllic school with a special group of students. The book hints right from the start at what makes these students special when Kathy references “carers” and “donors,” but it does not fully reveal their situation until later in the book. The students are only partially aware of their purpose because the teachers at the school shelter them from the full truth. When Kathy and her friends leave the school, the full reality of their situation threatens their relationships and their hopes for their futures.
The plot of this book is not action-packed and moves slowly. It is more character-driven, which I enjoy. Witnessing the feelings and revelations that Kathy experiences engulfs the reader into the situation and allows for greater sympathy towards the characters.
The commentary this book provides on society's decisions is still relevant today more than 15 years after its publication. To comment on them here would mean spoiling the book, so I will refrain. Suffice it say, the actions of society in this book are disturbing, yet somewhat understandable. It's definitely a debatable form of progress.
I have always enjoyed dystopian novels, and this one did not disappoint. I would recommend it to any fans of the genre.
Kept the constant but not so intense suspense right from the beginning. It was never super exciting and/or shocking but it was very clear that this was by design.
Ishiguro takes you a very deliberately plotted journey during which little pieces revealed in a steady manner.
Keskellä tylsistyttäviä yksityiskohtaisia kuvauksia merkityksettömien ihmisten kokemussisällöistä, mutta lopulta kuitenkin haikea teos.
I keep thinking about how to describe this book and the word that comes most to my mind is
“Quiet”. Even after the tragic ending of their romance the disposition of the main character is quiet. Just quietly accepting their fate. I wanted them to get angry and fight harder but of course their acceptance made it that much more heartbreaking. What was expected of them was so ingrained in them that even when they really understood it all, it didn't matter. It's the only way of life they've ever known. I have a lot more to say but the thoughts are very disjointed so I'll spare you
lol sad idk.
It's not emotional, nothing over the top happens, just a constant feeling of sadness and fatality. It's a book that i loved reading very slowly on purpose.