Never Let Me Go

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Average customer rating 5 (16 comments)

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very interested, i like this........

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The most disturbing premise of this book is all the more significant because it is not revealed until more than half way through the book, and because it is presented with such a rational basis that the horror of the story is not immediately evident. The writing is clean and sparse, yet the author manages to convey a true sense of place throughout. A haunting book.

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This is a beautiful, delicately written book. It's a really interesting, unique take on a subject thats kind of a scifi staple. The story is very un-scifi-like, in fact, so even if you don't usually care for the genre, you'll probably really enjoy this book.

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I would like someday to see this book taught in our public schools, alongside To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984 and the like. Never Let Me Go is a subtle tale of intrigue which doubles as a moral education, while eschewing easy answers and pedantics. In it, Ishiguro grapples with ideas that shall surely come to preoccupy our species in the decades to come. One of the finest books in English of this young century.

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I had heard this was a science fiction story so when I started reading it I was sort of surprised. The subtle matter-of-fact style of prose works perfectly to reinforce the eerie and awkward themes. Those themes being explored are the problems with bringing into the world life simply to be consumed by the more powerful group. This is exactly what we do with non-human animals we use for food. We bring them into the world for the sole purpose of being destroyed. There are also clear parallels in the euphemisms we use for farmed animals (meat=flesh, veal=calf, pork=pig) and the those used by characters in the novel like "donation" for the removal of one's organs as if it were the donors choice. There is talk in the story of a welfare reform movement for better conditions for the clones. Does this not exactly mirror the real life farmed animal welfare movement headed by such groups as Peta and the HSUS? Am I the only one seeing this parallel?

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A surprisingly excellent read!

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This melancholic novel is science fiction to the extent that it is an alternate 1980s (more or less). In some ways this is an ultimate British novel, the kind I would read as an adolescent and wonder, what just happened? what gave offense? why has this relationship suddenly ended? It was all too subtle for me, and Ishiguro turns that subtle, squeamish sensibility into a determinant in the book's action. The students have been slowly but clearly taught their duty, but they don't think about this much, or question it, or really even talk about it. Thus, theme #1 is about inevitability and the passivity of a British underclass. Theme #2: Throughout, the pervasive, underlying question of what gives a life its meaning. Like the students in Lev Grossman's dyspeptic The Magicians, the Hailsham students find that being a special student at a special school does not necessarily prepare you to do anything. The Hailsham students grasp for straws of meaning where they can--in the teacher's words, in made-up narratives about the teachers and each other, in their relationships, and in their interpretations of Hailsham's policies. Ultimately, none of it matters. Again, this is all excruciatingly understated, but definitely present. It certainly contrasts with the intense anger expressed by writers in formerly colonized countries, who go to school only to discover that the promise of freedom is a lie, and that their opportunities and options are not equal. That the narrator of Never Let Me Go is reasonably happy with her life is more chilling than any other aspect of this wonderfully realized novel.

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I chose this book at Powell's after reading a review of it (which I rarely do) and was extremely pleased. The quiet impact of the writing stayed with me for days and still evokes a mood when I catch sight of it on my bookshelf. (More high praise - I rarely keep the books I read). It also led me to seek out more of Ishiguro's work.

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This luminous, delicate, considerate, gentle, and deeply moving novel edged out "The Road" as my favorite novel of the first decade of the 21st century. Surprising, riveting, warm, intimate, lyrical, compassionate, and so, so sad. I'll never forget the sequence in which the narrator recalls herself as a little girl, alone in her room singing the eponymous song to herself.....

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Here is a profound and moving account of a not-so-future time when body parts are removed from clones, specially raised for this purpose. It goes to the heart of prejudice. . . .

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This was the first Ishiguro that I read and it was an intense, amazing reading experience. I remember where I was while I read it; I stayed up to finish it, not caring that I was bleary-eyed at work. I even remember the music I was listening to when I read it. It's that kind of book. And after that, I read everything Ishiguro has written. "Remains of the Day" may be better - but it's hard to compare them, they're so different.

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This book surprised and moved me from beginning to end. Truly original and brilliantly executed. A perfect 10.

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Devastating and profound.

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A very good romance novel wrapped in an eerie atmosphere. I liked it because at the same time the characters were drawn in a way that made them seem strange and far removed, they were also sympathetic and ultimately involving. I disagree with folks who have described this as a novel about cloning. If Ishiguro really wanted to explore cloning in great depth he would have included scientists, doctors, researchers etc. as full blown characters and allowed them to articulate.

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This is the first novel I have read by this author, and I am completely taken by this author's writing. I have not been able to stop thinking about this book since I finished it. It really opens up your mind and makes you question a lot of things that are going on in the world around you. It takes on the hefty subject of medical science and it's ethics, and what consequences there might be by thinking you can play "God", and discusses it in a poetic, emotional way. I was in tears in certain parts, and totally enthralled by its complexity. The story is told in first person, and this makes it even more personal and compelling. This book is a must read! I would give it more than 5 stars if I could!

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Much like a Margeret Atwood dystopian and futuristic novel, Ishiguro once again outdoes himself in a story of innocence and horror. The novel keeps us guessing as if there was a mystery to be solved, with subtle details and mannerism embedded into the story that awash over us in different time and moments in the novel. Reading Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" is like opening a window in the reader's mind - a window that will expose the readers to new questions on the assumptions of what makes a human being a human being and force us to explore the dichotomy between science and ethics.