Never Let Me Go

I liked this book a lot. I thought there were some flaws in it but the flow and the mood made up for them and I loved some of the images used, especially the litter catching at the end, which I found very powerful.

Thank you, Qzer, for a perceptive and sensitive review of this superb novel. The problem of the 'sacrificed' member or set of the society has always been with us. The system targets a group - young men for the military, for example -- and they are reared with the notion that it is their duty to give their young lives for the benefit of the 'state' or the social system. It's interesting that Mr. Ishiguro comes from a Japanese ethos. It is well known that their culture instilled the standard of total self-sacrifice in their young men prior to and during the second world war. Ishiguro emigrated when only six years old, but the tradition was no doubt well understood by him even then.

But all cultures instill a similar sense of duty. This is the 'universal' which raises this novel above the 'genre' category.

So that when he takes up the challenge of depicting the fate -- and it is a quite credible prospect, as medical science makes more options possible, that such 'sacrifices' would seem desirable -- of those selected to be organ donors, ad extremis, he does this with great sensitivity and insight.

It is heartbreaking as the last of the group, having seen her schoolfellows 'harvested' one by one, faces her own lonely death.

Footnote: The current practice in which parents of a sick child may deliberately choose to produce a sibling who will be a compatible donor for bone marrow or some other bodily material is, if you like, the first but not likely the last example of what will be a challenging moral issue.

It's not different in style to Ishiguro's other books. And it's not sci-fi and it doesn't read like he's trying his hand at genre fiction.

Utterly disagree. For me, Never Let Me Go is markedly different from his usual style and, more than anything, it felt like he was cack-handedly attempting genre fiction, and singularly failing. *phew*

I haven't read 'Never Let Me Go', but, in the context of that ignorance, I will say this: everything good I hear about it (leaving aside the usual variations on 'moving', 'tremendous' etc.) makes me think, "Well, Michael Marshall Smith already did that in 'Spares'."

'Spares' is also about clones as outcasts, used by society, literally, as spare parts. The clones here are also brainwashed, denied freedom and meaningful existence and not even given a real understanding of what life is. But Smith's narrator is their 'keeper', who colludes with a 'malfunctioning' medical droid to free them, and then tries to protect them from the hostile world outside.

So, inevitably, I find myself building up an idea of another literary favourite trying his hand at genre fiction, with the aim, no doubt, of making existing sci-fi tropes more meaningful, but with an accompanying lack of respect for what authors before him have already achieved with those tropes. That impression is all I can report at this stage.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro made me think of society's outcasts in a different way. I'd never been drawn into in so poignant and poetic a way how we, as a society, sometimes choose to see what's convenient to us rather than what's in front of us. People we wish to use we rename, re-designate, taking away their right to compassion, to humanity. In the future (the novel suggests) we might call these people clones, breeding into them a stoical and therefore tragic acceptance of their own usage; in the past they have had many other names.

Tom, that's a very interesting take on the content. Certainly, I understood that that's how I was *supposed* to feel. (partly from the flap copy, to be honest) It's just that, for me, reading the novel itself was a ghastly, tedious experience. I agree that the themes you mention are important, potentially moving ones - how then could Ishiguro render them (at least for me) so utterly stultifying? Thanks, though, for sharing your positive experience. I was genuine when I said I'd like some insight into why people who enjoyed it think they did. Very interesting.

I didn't enjoy this book at all. I thought the subject matter very hard to deal with morally however I got so frustrated that they just accepted everything and never questioned what was going on.

The book just made me angry - at the story, at the characters and at myself for bothering to finish the book.

'I was desolate when I finished this book - literally awash with tears.'

This, at least, I could relate to - but it was my sorrow at the many hours I had wasted on this absurd, pipsqueak cowpat of a novel.

Ha ha Tim. Perhaps send that off as a quote for the next edition of the novel. It is strange how people can have such different reactions to the book. But that's a good thing.

It's not that I think less of someone for liking this book. I'm just genuinely fascinated by them, because it's a point where my empathy breaks down. I can imagine what might drive a man to murder. I can imagine the dark thoughts that might drive the righteous indigination of a fascist. But I cannot, despite my best efforts, get inside the head of a Never Let Me Go apologist. I'm trying to *understand* these people.

I was desolate when I finished this book - literally awash with tears. And I loved the intentional gaucheness of the narrative voice.

Don't let confusion prevent you from seeing the tedium.

Ishiguro is a man. The narrator of Never Let Me Go is a woman. Hence the confusion.

I think it's a wonderful book and I was deeply moved by it.

Ahhhh - confusion reined for a minute there :)

But not in Ishiguro's trousers.

Ishiguro is a she??? I did not realise that! I loved it purely because the narrative flows so beautifully and it is therefore so simple and enjoyable to read. The way conversation is conveyed is so 'correct' and it's a real pleasure to see someone achieve this.

Wow! is she a she? I just assumed - for no good reason - Ishiguro was a man! Now i feel bad, hope shes not on here! :)

Well, I loved it but I'm not sure if I could mount a defence. I think the narrator was extremely skillful - you are right, she described events as she saw them but at the same time as a reader you always knew exactly what was going on. And I found the ending particularly moving.

Could anyone explain to me why this novel is supposed to be good? I struggled all the way through to the end, and got precisely nothing from it. By using a gauche, unliterary narrator, Ishiguro neatly sidesteps the pressure to write in an interesting, coherent way. I'm genuinely interested to hear someone mount a defence of this book, or at least to explain why they enjoyed it. I like Ishiguro, I just hated this book.

If you like Ishiguro in general, I'm surprised you've found this book disappointing. It's tightly-controlled, meticulously evocative, and quietly, devastatingly lonely -- much like The Remains of the Day or When We Were Orphans, I thought. While the genre (science fiction, sort of) is quite different from any of Ishiguro's previous novels, I suppose his previous novels are quite as different (in genre and setting, at least) from one another. It's the tension between the characters -- the supressed anguish, the irretrievable loss of innocence -- that is constant across the spectrum of Ishiguro's books. I think that tension, and Ishiguro's lucid evocation of the interplay between desire and memory and regret, is really evident in this book. That why *I* liked it.

I suppose the narrative voice was not as eloquent as those of some of Ishiguro's other narrators; but I think it's quite poignant when someone uses plain speech to convey profound emotion. (for a rather geeky example, cf. Sam Gamgee in The Fellowship of the Ring, after Gimli's song: "I like that!...But it makes the darkeness seem heavier, thinking of all those lamps.")

Having said all that, this is not my favourite of Ishiguro's books, either; but I did like it.

Whoops: darkness, not darkeness. Reading too much Chaucer, I suppose.