Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

This was an unusual book, which reminded me almost immediately of Atwood’s The Handmaiden’s Tale. Lisa Olin and Sara Coe each recommended this one to me, so it quickly rose the top of the to-be-read list. I had never read Remains of the Day by Ishiguro but I ignored my standard guilt at skipping a classic by the same author and plucked NLMG off the shelf at the library.

As Lisa said when she recommended it, the book is good but is not about what’s on the book jacket. I’m going to try to write about the book without giving away the major pieces of the plot. It’s ironic, or coincidental, or something, because in the book, the characters are referred to as having been “told but not told” about the unusual circumstances under which they live.

I would categorize this book as “mainstream science fiction,” in that it is science fiction incidentally not primarily. (I’d also categorize The Time Travelers Wife and a childhood favorite Girl with the Silver Eyes similarly. Even Passages, which probably falls more squarely in the fantasy realm could be described this way too.) There are elements of the book that are not possible with today’s science and medicine but these aspects of the story are juxtaposed with people who live in a society that is otherwise recognizable as ours. Certainly, social commentary emerges. One of the things Ishiguro does quite well is to effortlessly teach the reader his specialized vocabulary for this alternate world. Only in Handmaiden and perhaps Everything is Illuminated have I seen language used this way this well.

The book follows three main characters, Kath (the narrator), Tommy, and Ruth, starting when they are all students at Hailsham, ostensibly an idyllic boarding school. There are clear, well-written moments of adolescent angst; the manipulation and volatility of some of the characters also felt extremely accurate. I also related to the following passage, highlighting the importance of certain possessions:

"I don't know if you had collections where you were. When you came across old students from Hailsham, you always find them, sooner or later, getting nostalgic about their collections...You each had a wooden chest with your name on it, which you kept under your bed and filled with your possessions--the stuff you acquired from the Sales or the Exchanges. I can remember one or two students not bothering much with their collections, but most of us took enormous care, bringing things out to display, putting other things away carefully."

At first it is easy to read those personality characteristics as standard pre-teen behavior but as the book progresses, additional underlying forces emerge that explain the behavior more fully. As the narrator comments, the students are "...waiting for the moment when you realise you really are different to them; that there are people out there, like Madame, who don't hate you or wish you any harm, but who nevertheless shudder at the very thought of you--of how you were brought into this world and why--and who dread the idea of your hand brushing against theirs." Waiting and anticipation was a strong theme in this book. At a later point in the story, the narrator comments, "it was like she'd been waiting and waiting for me to do something to her and she thought the time had come now."

The characters know, having been "told but not told," that something ominous is coming. In one passage, Tommy is describing a new type of animal he had begun to draw, unconsciously describing society's responsibility to him:

"If you make them tiny, and you have to because the pages are only about this big, then everything changes. It's like they come to life by themselves. Then you have to draw in all these different details for them. You have to think about how they'd protect themselves, how they'd reach things."

There were some choices Ishiguro made around Kath's voice that I question. Given his (the author’s) recognition for excellent writing, I can only presume that the tone of her voice is intentional. However, the lack of emotional connection that Kath has in telling the story is surprising and not entirely justified from within the story. She also has a habit that I can only describe as annoying where she ends each chapter with a “teaser” such as, "We started to walk back toward 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." In some ways, this mirrors the imperfect information that the characters have about their own lives, but it didn’t draw me in to her story as I think it was supposed to.

I hesitate to even comment on the climax because I don't want to give it away. I'll limit my comments to the following: the climactic moments are wonderful and horrible, and a scary commentary on the myths we create for ourselves.

I struggled while I was reading this book because of my problems with the narrator. However, having written about it here I appreciate the story and the themes more. As I felt after seeing The Sixth Sense , I want to go back and read it again knowing the ending. That's probably the best recommendation I can give a book.