Narrated by Kathy, now 31, Never Let Me Go hauntingly dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School, and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world.
A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life.
Now a major movie starring Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield
thanks for update stewart - we 'did' this one in the real life group so i'll pass, from alison
ReplyDeleteI am still ploughing through The Observations but nearly there so will hopefully pick up a copy of this once it is available. Sounds interesting!
ReplyDeleteFabulous. This is another book I've had on my 'to read' list for some time. Like Mary, I've yet to finish 'The Observations', but am really looking forward to reading 'Never Let Me Go'.
ReplyDeleteStarted reading it yesterday, nearly finished, totally enthralled. The author just gives little titbits as you go along, will definity finish it today. Hope the film is as good as the book.
ReplyDeleteHollyoaks meets Brave New World....I enjoyed this book although I thought it dragged in the middle. Interesting and spooky concept. I liked the narrative being contempory with no attempt at futuristic elaboration...which made the book have a scary realism. Lack of rebellion from the characters and no 'human rights' miltancy from outsiders made me question the storyline somewhat. However this may be interpreted as an effect of brainwashing by all involved. Once again 'At Home with Faber' has encouraged me to read a book that I would not have normally chosen for myself, which I have enjoyed immensely.
ReplyDeleteVery Very Strange and Very Very good! It was a good book with the way then meaning unrolls throughout the story line keeping you questioning what it was all about. I did eventually work it out and before it became blindingly obvious! I thought the main characters were well developed, though I agree with the comment by Effy on the lack of opposition to it - Had I found myself in that position towards the end I would have run away not blindly accept the fate.
ReplyDeleteThis was my first book and I am thrilled to finally have the opportunity to join a reading group but am unsure of the protocol - tried to write without using "spoilers" for those that have not yet read it - is that the done thing or not?
Ready to start the next one now!
I find this one gripping and totally believable. It is related in just the right register for the character. These teenagers would not rebel; they were brought up to accept passively. And the outside world would not protest; it would all be so secretive. For that reason it is a love story that seriously scares me.
ReplyDeleteThis is the best book so far. I read it a couple of years ago with Stromness Reading Group and enjoyed reading it again.
ReplyDeleteThe storyline of this book is given to us in tantalizing snippets and, given what we discover over the course of the novel, it is the only way our characters could actually cope with the knowledge.
The language is in keeping with the atmosphere surrounding the building and the children who live there. Like Jennifer, I too think the passivity of those involved makes it truly scary.
Thanks for reminding me to re-read it.
I enjoyed this far more than I expected to - it is 'normal' enough to seem at times like any other school-based novel, but will the additional intrigue of the 'odd' storyline and plot twists - alomst like two books in one. I found the characterisation to be very believable, and it rasied a lot of interesting social issues without being 'preachy'. I don't think I would have picked this up left to my own devices, but I enjoyed it and am pleased that I read it.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading this book and the way the story unfolded. It raises all sorts of interesting questions about identity and what it means to be a human being. In the past I have read and enjoyed medical thrillers but his is much more subtle. I also wondered why this group of people did not rebel, either violently or by simply running away, given that there seemed to be plenty of opportunity. There seemed to be no coercion and the fatalism came from up-bringing. This seemed to raise questions about the motivation of the people running Hailsham. They did not seem to have challenged the programme per se, but simply tried to operate it in a more humane way.
ReplyDeleteDefinately recommend this book.
Happy New Year everyone. Look forward to seeing what 2011 brings bookwise.
This is possibly one of the most disturbing novels I have ever read. It begins innocently enough, as though heralding just another of those traditional coming of age stories set in an English boarding school in secluded countryside. All too quickly, however, it becomes obvious there is something much darker and sinister at play. I soon found myself wondering why there is never any mention of the students’ parents or families.
ReplyDeleteTo me the novel reads more like the journal of a teenager breathlessly noting down the complicated events of her life than the retelling of them by a 31 year-old. Ishiguro’s use of long sentences in unadorned, simple language pushes the story on relentlessly without giving the reader any real chance to pause and reflect on the full horror of what is unfolding. I guess he means in this way to underline the blurring between normality and the exception, maturity and puerile innocence. Learning their fate early on the students are forced to grow up before their time, yet being sheltered from the outside world they remain, in many ways, naïve beyond their years.
Had the story been set thirty years or so in the future I think I would have found the events far more believable than at the time they take place. On the other hand, the way the guardians behave – as though they’re afraid to go against whatever authority is supposed to have established institutions like Hailsham – strikes me as being from a few decades earlier. By the 1980s or 1990s I’d have thought they would have been somewhat bolder in attempting to change the environment these unfortunate students grow up in if they were really so concerned about it. This aspect of the story made me feel even more uncomfortable about the whole thing than I was already. I do understand, however, why none of the students tried to escape. Being so ‘programmed’ to their inevitable destiny they would not have lasted long outside the school gates anyway.
The ending is rather too straightforward, I think. After the way Ishiguro develops his story so slowly, as though peeling away layers of gauze to gradually reveal all the complex issues of the plot, I was expecting at least one final twist in the tale. The fact that Kath and Tommy are simply able to turn up at Madame’s house, be invited in and for Miss Emily to provide answers to all their questions seems just a little too easy to me.
I ‘m certainly glad to have read this novel, but it was by no means easy to digest. A week after finishing it I still catch myself thinking about it from time to time.
Stewart sent "Never Let Me Go" to me - if he had not done so, I would not have read it, after my struggles with the over-written "Lacuna", which attempted to give far more information about twentieth century Mexico and America than one could shake a stick at. "Lacuna" had seemed to confirm all my doubts about bookgroups - that one had to read worthy, prize-winning, homework books and find something sensible to say about them.
ReplyDelete"Never Let Me go" was a splendid contrast - so engagingly written that I read it in one sitting during the Christmas hols. Ishiguro's dystopia is as carefully delineated and gradually uncovered as Attwood's "The Handmaid's Tale". The interior-focussed pre-occupations of the teenage students which blind them to the wider reality of their situation are credible. Comments above about the lack of rebellion of the students and the carers and donors raise issues with which, I assume, Ishiguro is directing us to grapple: issues of free will and societal conformity. The setting is a parallel world Britain; in conformist societies such as Japan and Austria we see different cultural expectations about the role of the individual and the obligation of the individual to the State. The "white-coat" syndrome of conformity to the requirements of an authority figure is well-documented. The Jesuit saying "give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man" encapsulates what we know about the 'total institution', cultural conditioning and the drive to conform. Ishiguro poses questions about the nature of individuality and of group behaviour in a most engaging and thought provoking way.
We are also, of course, required to consider the ethics of medical experimentation, cloning and transplantation, and, perhaps, to challenge the morality of using another species to prolong our own lives.
Wow! Fantastic book! Intriguing, compelling, disturbing and thought-provoking. I've recommended it to my AH students, who study medical ethics as part of their course. It was this aspect, rather than issues of identity or conformity, that gave me greatest pause for thought. In a world where technological advance far outstrips ethical debate, we do find ourselves using techniques before the ethical issues have been fully explored. Scary.
ReplyDeleteThe attitude of the Hailsham students kind of reminds me of the pig that wants to be eaten in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
What's next??
I'll Never Get The Time Back That I Wasted On This Book. Sorry. I just didn't get on well with this book at all. I found it dragged along and I had to force myself to read it. The characters annoyed me with their constant reflections on minute details and I found the whole thing very slow paced. I was recently on a long haul flight and the film was showing, suffice to say, I didn't watch it. Although I did read a very good book called "Miss Bangkok" about prostitution in Thailand which I'd recommend!
ReplyDeleteWhen I first got the book I only managed to read a couple of pages before being distracted, however a short review in my Reader's Digest inspired me to pick it up again and this time I read it in about 3 nights!
ReplyDeleteOverall I quite enjoyed reading this, the characters were well put together and the story at times intriguing, although it did leave me feeling a bit empty at the end. I did find myself thinking 'Thank heavens we don't quite live in a world like that yet'!
I enjoyed it enough to think about picking up another book by this author but not so much that I would rave about it!
I see the film is one of the Phoenix Film Club films for March....
ReplyDeleteI thought this book was brilliantly written and I love the way Ishiguro says so much in so few words.I love the way he reperesents what his characters are saying and thinking. The only thing I didn't like was that there were echoes of the butler in The Remains of the Day, in the sense that he is similarly emotionally undeveloped and non-reactive. Ishiguro does do this brilliantly, of course, and I am nit-picking!
ReplyDeleteNever Let Me Go.
ReplyDeleteEssentially this book portrays the lives of young people specifically raised to become donors in every sense of the word. They are at the premium end of this process and are educated at Hailsham, which at first appears to be a boarding school, and we encounter the relationships of a small group as they move towards adulthood and their destiny.
The book is well written, well thought out and it deals with the subject of what is, to all intents and purposes, cloning for spare parts. Cathy as a carer endures the loss of people she has come to love and is resigned to the process of making donations.
This book raises more ethical issues than it answers in this age of donor siblings. We did not glimpse the society in which these clones were used, nor did we see who benefitted from their destruction.
I would recommend it to a friend in the same way that I might recommend Margaret Attwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale'
I feel thoroughly out of step after reading reviews of Never Let me Go. Was I reading the same book?
ReplyDeleteIt was a quick read. I found it hard to engage with the characters and I do not enjoy the first person narrative -- but I did keep turning the pages, so there was something in it drawing me on.
The main subject matter of the book was apparent very early on and held no suspense, so I was expecting something deeper to turn up soon. A twist, some complexity... some context or back story, more detail about how these people came to be, and the mechanics of the donor programme. Altogether, I was left feeling deeply unsatisifed by a tale that could have been so much more. How The Times could even begin to compare this story to The Handmaid's Tale is beyond me, because I find that it cannot hold candle to that (or to John Wyndham, for that matter.)
On reflection, I began to suspect that the fault lay in me for taking the tale at face value. Perhaps Ishiguro has been very clever in writing this and in portraying the under-developed nature of the protagonist and other characters. Of course there can be no back story for characters who were created, have no families, no home, no life beyond the Institution. Sadly he only succeeded in annoying me because by telling the story in the words of an incomplete being he provided me with a lack of the normal riches that I look for in my reading. I was unable to engage with the (purposely?) under-developed characters and felt as though I was reading an 11 year old's diary. Most of all, I was aware that I was craving some good descriptive text.
As for the ending? C'mon. Perhaps he was as bored by his own story as I became -- but the ending was completely unbelievable.
Leaving the author and the story aside, I'd just like to note that my reading was seriously impaired by the shockingly poor hyphenation control. Fully-justified margins in this text provided repeated horrors in the hyphenation department. Really...
did-
n't
UMPTEEN times,and more besides. It jars, and wrests one's attention from the story. Just plain ugly.
I've read all the comments above and it does seem as though I'm not in agreement with the majority and that most readers have enjoyed this book. I may re-read it and try to capture whatever I missed the first time around.
Here I am, at the tail end, months after everybody else. I just finished the book this morning, and am not entirely sure what I made of it.
ReplyDeleteI like the fact it is written in the first person, as I thought it made it more intimate.
I also enjoyed the way that the story unfolded slowly, with just a hint here and there that life was not as normal as it first appeared.
It has certainly left me thinking about 'designer' babies - and while I would like to console myself with the thought that this could never happen on the scale in this book, I do find myself wondering how long it will be before it actually does.
I was interested to read this as I had not long since seen the movie. The movie did follow the book far more closely than a lot of screenplays do, and I think I actually enjoyed it more - it did seem to make the characters a bit more real, and a bit more surreal at the same time. I did wonder how long it would have taken me to realise what the book was really about if I hadn't already known.
ReplyDeleteIt was a fairly easy read for me, and I did enjoy it, though I did prefer the movie (which isn't usually the case for me).