Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

I picked this book up while browsing in Borders a few months ago and finally got around to reading it. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is about the life of Kathy H., a young woman reminiscing about her childhood at the boarding school she grew up in called, Hailsham and her early adulthood after leaving the school.

The story is set in a dystopian version of Britain where human beings are cloned in order to provide organ transplants. Kathy and her classmates have been created to be donors. Hailsham and later the Cottages, are set to prepare them for their futures, first as carers, who look after and provide emotional support to donors, then later when they are older, they will become organ donors themselves.

This book chronicles not only the life of Kathy, but follows her relationships with two of her close friends from Hailsham until adulthood.

In one of his most acclaimed and original novels of recent years, Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, 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.

Although I enjoyed this book, the idea of clones to become organ donors was very interesting, I didn’t really feel myself connecting with the characters, which to me is what is needed to make a great book. That said, I would not hesitate to pick up another one of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels.

Ishiguro did a great job of creating an idyllic school setting that I could really see.. made me kind of wish I went to a school like that! (but only if Hogwarts didn’t exist of course!).

This novel is being made into a film at the moment, apparently starring Keira Knightley, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out.

Rating 3/5

If you liked this novel you may like: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro