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Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro

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Awards

The Rooster 2006 Morning News Tournament of Books Nominee

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Powells.com Staff Pick

Ishiguro's prose has never failed to dazzle me, and this novel is certainly no exception. With a near stillness, a quiet passivity, Ishiguro's narrator tells the story of her and her two friends' eerie predestined fate; a fate that echoes throughout novels such as The Handmaid's Tale and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. What is revealed here is an important, wistful meditation on life and society. His books are marvels — astonishing works of art.
Recommended by Georgie, Powells.com

Ishiguro takes a meditative look at childhood, loss of innocence, and human deception and the drive for survival. This is a haunting narrative that is joyous and sad at once — reminiscent of Philip K. Dick, but with a very literary and poignant eye for deeper "human" emotion. This book takes its time, but it will surprise you. In the end, it may even change the way you think about the nature of man.
Recommended by John B., Powells.com

Review-a-Day   (What is Review-a-Day?)

"The beauty in this novel must be carefully distinguished from its power to distress. Ultimately, there is a connection: the depth and quality of the relationships between Kath, Tommy and Ruth certainly accentuate the cruelty of their deaths. From under the shadow of their fate, Ishiguro draws warmly compelling vignettes of love and friendship that cumulatively establish an urgent and engrossing narrative pace." Ruth Scurr, Times Literary Supplement (read the entire Times Literary Supplement)

"Suffice it to say that Ishiguro serves up the saddest, most persuasive science fiction you'll read....With its fantastic, inky bleakness, Never Let Me Go itself mutates the meaning of 'Ishiguroish,' or 'Ishiguroesque,' or whatever epithet sticks to this wonderful writer." Joseph O'Neill, The Atlantic Monthly (read the entire Atlantic Monthly review)

"Never Let Me Go is a fantasy so mundanely told, so excruciatingly ordinary in transit, its fantastic elements so smothered in the loam of the banal and so deliberately grounded, that the effect is not just of fantasy made credible or lifelike, but of the real invading fantasy, bursting into its eccentricity and claiming it as normal. Given that Ishiguro's new novel is explicitly about cloning, that it is, in effect, a science fiction set in the present day, and that the odds against success in this mode are bullyingly stacked, his success in writing a novel that is at once speculative, experimental, and humanly moving is almost miraculous." James Wood, The New Republic (read the entire New Republic review)

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans, comes an unforgettable edge-of-your-seat mystery that is at once heartbreakingly tender and morally courageous about what it means to be human.

Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it.

Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it's only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.

Review:

"In this luminous offering, [Ishiguro] nimbly navigates the landscape of emotion — the inevitable link between present and past and the fine line between compassion and cruelty, pleasure and pain." Booklist

Review:

"Ishiguro?s elegant prose and masterly ways with characterization make for a lovely tale of memory, self-understanding, and love." Library Journal (starred review)

Review:

"Perfect pacing and infinite subtlety.... A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy." Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Synopsis:

From the acclaimed author of "The "Remains of the Day and "When We Were Orphans, a moving new novel that subtly reimagines our world and time in a haunting story of friendship and love. <BR>As a child, Kathy-now thirty-one years old-lived at Hailsham, a private school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe that they were special and that their well-being was crucial not only for themselves but for the society they would eventually enter. Kathy had long ago put this idyllic past behind her, but when two of her Hailsham friends come back into her life, she stops resisting the pull of memory. <BR>And so, as her friendship with Ruth is rekindled, and as the feelings that long ago fueled her adolescent crush on Tommy begin to deepen into love, Kathy recalls their years at Hailsham. She describes happy scenes of boys and girls growing up together, unperturbed-even comforted-by their isolation. But she describes other scenes as well: of discord and misunderstanding that hint at a dark secret behind Hailsham's nurturing facade. With the dawning clarity of hindsight, the three friends are compelled to face the truth about their childhood-and about their lives now. <BR>A tale of deceptive simplicity, "Never Let Me Go slowly reveals an extraordinary emotional depth and resonance-and" takes its place among Kazuo Ishiguro's finest work.

Synopsis:

From the Booker Prize-winning author of "The Remains of the Day" and "When We Were Orphans" comes an unforgettable edge-of-your-seat mystery that is at once heartbreakingly tender and morally courageous about what it means to be human.
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About the Author

Kazuo Ishiguro is the author of five previous novels, including The Remains of the Day which won the Booker Prize and became an international best seller. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages. In 1995 he received an Order of the British Empire for service to literature, and in 1998 was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. He lives in London with his wife and daughter.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 4 comments:
Kate, August 18, 2007 (view all comments by Kate)
I will never forget the first sentence. "My name is Kathy H. and I'm a carer." When the import of her last initial hit me later, I cried. The story is deeply poignant to the point of aching. Kathie holds her pillow as the baby she will never have, imagining herself singing "Never let me go," but right there is the unadmitted wish to be someone's baby herself. Unloved, she can still love. These tragic orphans have only each other and are able even in their stunted, deformed lives, to love each other. Their solitary, brave humanity makes us love and pity them and the lonely, brave core in all of us.
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han.richards, May 27, 2007 (view all comments by han.richards)
This stunning latest novel by the brilliantly acclaimed novelist Kazuo Ishiguro brings to the forefront of the reader's mind the question of what it is to be human. As a reader you show sympathy for Kathy H and her peers as they are naive towards the inevitable destination they are travelling toward - donation. Fantastic, gripping and heart rendering at the best moments.
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fulham_templar, March 1, 2007 (view all comments by fulham_templar)
This beautiful book has haunted me for some weeks after I finished reading it. The sparse language and stlye infuses me with a feeling of both tenderness and premonition. ( certainly it is an exercise, but a succesfull one ). The chapter on Hailsham `s "raison d etre " was, I felt, a bit superfluous.
However, Kathy and Tommy discussing his fourth "donation" and what might happen after, has sent shivers down my spine. Refferences have been made to Beckett, Kafka and various Sf writers. However, I am reminded of Stanislaw Lem, the Polish SF writer, who often muses and human condition and just what sense does the conundrum of human life make.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9781400043392
Author:
Ishiguro, Kazuo
Publisher:
Alfred A. Knopf
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Women
Subject:
England
Publication Date:
January 2005
Binding:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Pages:
304
Dimensions:
8.70x5.96x1.18 in. 1.10 lbs.
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