Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro
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Book Reviews of Never Let Me Go
Book Review: A slow read but of high literary importance
Summary: 3 Stars
Warning: Contains Spoilers and Plot details
The novel, Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro is a tale of a future dystopian society, which we may face due to our excessive nature of consuming. The setting takes place in Britain where the world is seemingly at peace with its military conflicts, but the consequences of violence mounts high when grave injuries and diseases threaten the fate of humanity. The solution... to breed clones for each human body ensures that for every wound there is a solution without fail. Yet, with the widespread acceptance of the human cloning industry, what does the human race think of its counterpart? Nothing. Although the answer is cruel and backlashes on every aspect of human morality, our instinct to survive desensitizes humans to guilt as someone may think after an organ operation, `Did I kill someone for this kidney?' or `Is there a part of myself that died without me ever knowing it?' Such thoughts can be a crippling blow to one's morale, yet since the process of cloning is such an efficient way to ensure survival, the human race allows it to flourish no matter what the cost.
As the humans may see clones as expendable resources, yet there are some other reasons why they are not welcomed in society. Much like slaves and immigrants in the past, clones are considered to be "sub-humans" of this futuristic society. They are used then thrown away when they are no longer of use. One of the obvious differences that stand out about the clone, Kathy, is the misspelling of some of her words. She would spell civilize as "civilise" and realize as "realise." Although it is not a remarkable difference, society never fails to notice people's faults. Whenever an outsider makes an appearance, the people of society fear that he/she is a threat to their existence. Out of fear and ignorance, society criticizes anything that the outsider may do uncommonly; in this case, making a few spelling errors. As the slaughtering of clones continues, the question of whether or not they are human is raised. And to decide the debate, Hailsham steps forward. The students of Hailsham or clones are taught to be creative in the arts. Its operation was to prove that these clones were in fact human beings with souls, even though they were a "science experiment." However, no matter what Hailsham proves by having "students" create magnificent works, such as this book, humanity continues to bury itself in denial.
Every student of Hailsham is told what their sole purpose in life is from infancy. For Kathy to mention this rather calmly it may come as a surprise to the reader. In fact, this is one of Ishiguro's main themes. When there is an aggressor that asserts its power, it is common for any animal, including humans, to be submissive to that aggressor. Why the students had not seen beyond the walls of Hailsham was to keep them like ants in an ant-farm. The forest is another method of keeping the students under control, considering that if they even dare so venture outside Hailsham they could die in the process. The unwritten rules had kept student from inquiring the mysterious ways and the weekly examinations made sure their organs were healthy when the transplants were to be made. Kathy's role as "peacekeeper" is an example of their mind control. If the guardians were to encourage individualism, then the students wouldn't be like lemmings and, follow who ever was in lead. Yet, the most shocking thing in this book is that the students have enough opportunities to leave and run for their lives, but do not. It seems easier just to stay and go with the flow and not revolt. The clones just give up and wait to die like cattle. This is the fine line where Ishiguro separates himself from other more "American" works, which encourage individualism such as the movie "The Island" or "I-Robot."
Hailsham was both a prison and shelter. It was a separate community for the clones to grow and be treated like normal humans in a safe haven that shielded them from the outside world's prejudice. Nevertheless, Hailsham never let them forgot that their fate hung over their heads like a haunting shadow. And to make sure, every guardian, student, and unwritten rule subliminally kept them in line so that they may give up quietly and without fret. In doing so, these clones will submit their lives as human sacrifices for the survival of the human race.
Book Review: These characters are far from sheep...
Summary: 5 Stars
A few years ago I reviewed the 2005 film `The Island' and in my review I mentioned that the initial concept was stunning and that the direction that concept could have taken was really one of two ways; either a thinking man's intellectual film or a `no holds bar' action film. `The Island' was the later (and a really good one at that), but I really would have loved to see the concept fleshed out thoroughly to become something more engrossing and poignant.
The novel, `Never Let Me Go', by award winning author Kazuo Ishiguro is exactly what I was craving.
What I love so much about `Never Let Me Go' is that it is far less about the actual `cloning' concept and more or less an astute and extremely effecting portrait of adolescence and young adulthood. While yes, the main idea of humans being cloned for their eventual `donations' is always hanging over our heads as we read this engrossing novel (so engrossing that I read it in two sittings), it really becomes a secondary character, leaving open the way for the true meat of this novel to shine forth. This is a beautifully detailed (although never demandingly so) portrait of life and the coming of age realizations that come with it.
Told from the eyes of young Kathy (her protagonist reminds me of Benjamin Button in that she is really just our eyes into the lives of those around her), `Never Let Me Go' tells of three friends (Kathy, Ruth and Tommy) who grow up at somewhat of a boarding school named Hailsham. They grow up with the knowledge (although they rarely understand completely) that they have a specific course in life to follow. After they complete their school they will start their training to become carers (somewhat like nurses) before they get their notice that their donations will begin, where their bodies will serve the greater good of society, or humans.
After that they wait to complete, or die.
What Ishiguro's novel so marvelously does is create a sense of normalcy that is something completely unexpected and ultimately more moving. One might think that a concept like this would be ripe with `oh no we are going to die', thus making this something rather one-note and distancing it from the reader. Instead of placing divisions between these `clones' and the reader, Ishiguro makes each of the characters human. Instead of focusing on their impending doom (it is always there, but never the focal point) it focuses on their present life. They form friendships, relationships, aspirations, loyalties; everything that you and I form. They form attachments to songs, they enjoy visiting the city, they enjoy intimacies with one another. Ishiguro makes them just like you and me, and so when they are forced to face their mortality it doesn't feel like something far fetched or inhuman. Their eventual demise feels like a natural and heartbreaking death of a friend or relative because, thanks to Ishiguro's brilliant writing, these characters are not clones but humans.
You can feel it as if it were you going through the pain.
I also wanted to make mention of the writing style used here. I really found this commendable because of the small detail used to really take you inside the minds of these characters in each stage of their life. I initially found the writing to feel slightly amateurish and really felt that I was going to begin to dislike the novel, but as the pages turned I realized that this was so smart on Ishiguro's part. You see, when the novel opens Kathy is taking us back to the early years of her life at Hailsham, and she is merely eight years old. Ishiguro really makes her age and mindset so real to us, giving us conversations and actions that seem amateurish until you put it into perspective. His writing style makes subtle yet powerful shifts as Kathy grows up and discovers more about herself, her friends and her fate.
Stunning; really, truly stunning.
Book Review: What Does it Mean to be Human?
Summary: 4 Stars
Ishiguro is a fine writer; it is a pleasure to read one of his books just because of the quality of the writing, if nothing else. And while this one might not be everyone's cup of tea, it's hard not to marvel at his skill and to wonder what else you've been missing. The novel is suffused with an elegiac quality that seems to grow naturally out of the story. It is told by Kathy as she looks back at her early life with friends Ruth and Tommy at Hailsham, an elite English boarding school for students who, we come to realize, are quite different from students at most other schools. I won't say specifically how, although the revelation is not so much a bolt of lightning as a gradual dawning. Indeed, it is no great secret, and the matter-of-fact way in which the novel introduces and expands on it reinforces how "natural" these students' lives have become, both for them and for the larger society. The three friends drift apart sometime after they leave Hailsham, but they are later reunited through circumstances specific to their special nature, and it is this that occasions Kathy's reminiscing. It is an absorbing book. It is in addition (though not primarily) a criticism of scientific hubris. We know how to do something, therefore we should do it, or so goes the thinking, too often crowding out any proper consideration of consequences or collateral damage. Or of ethical issues, which will always arise but often too late to put the genie back in the bottle. But there is no aspect of science or policy touching human life, including attempts to do something supremely positive and beneficial, that does not raise ethical issues. I would love to have seen this developed further, but of course that would have changed the narrative arc and probably made the novel less effective because more heavy-handed, which it decidedly is not. This is not a criticism. My only criticism is that there is something just a bit Wizard-of-Oz-ish at the end (going to seek information and favors from the erstwhile wise and distant one, and finding that that person can't really do much for you), something a little bit cinematic when the explanations come pouring out. It seems almost too planned, though I don't know how we could have learned what we needed to learn otherwise while retaining Kathy's voice as narrator. The big question for anyone reading the story (BIG SPOILER HERE--YOU MAY NOT WANT TO CONTINUE IF YOU ARE PLANNING TO READ THE NOVEL) is: Why do the students--not just the three main characters, but all of them--accept their fate when they know the truth? Why don't they rebel, make a fuss, or run away? They all come to see at some point that their purpose is to donate and die. Why not flee and melt into society? Duty? Fear? Resignation? An inability to think of options? Any of these possibilities is chilling, as is the most likely one--that they have been so successfully conditioned that this option isn't even considered. That might be the most disturbing part of the story. Ishiguro doesn't hit the reader over the head with it, though. Rather, he allows it to work its way into your consciousness as you wonder at what appears to be an inevitable acceptance. It is much more effective that way, and much more disturbing. Much of the pain in the novel comes not from the "students" realizing what they are and how truncated their lives are, but from the more aware and kindly of the "creator" race coming face-to-face with the reality of the world they have created, with its cures and its cruelties, and realizing the toll it takes on beings not so different from themselves (despite their best efforts at self-deception), and therefore the toll it takes on all humanity--on the very idea of humanity.Book Review: where the cure is more important than the source...
Summary: 4 Stars
I'd expected this book to be about friends growing up in a boarding school, which it was, but it was about so much more than that. The science fiction elements were very intriguing, but I wished for more scientific details. I would have liked to know how some students could do up to three or four donations before "completing" (Ishiguro's unique and suitable word for dying). Were they cloned to have an extra liver, a third kidney? I don't believe so, because I thought the general public was against cloning biologically superior beings (they didn't want to be replaced). But I can't see how someone would live with more than one kidney extracted. Would part of the cornea or the cochlea of one ear count as an organ? This irked me throughout the book - that I never knew which organs Ishiguro referred to...if he referred to any at all. Perhaps he was just skimming over that because he didn't know how it would be possible either. An author like Michael Crichton (one of my favorites) would have explained it in great detail. Crichton is certainly superior to Ishiguro in that sense, but Ishiguro is superior in character development and emotions. That's probably why Never Let Me Go is a "New York Times Notable Book," and Crichton's novels are just "New York Times Bestsellers." The strictly science fiction genre cannot compete to win such distinctive literary awards. That's meant to be sarcastic...I wish they could win.
So anyway, this story reminded me of the 2005 movie The Island, a movie I highly recommend if you like this book - both have a protective "world" for the clones to grow up and live in, where physical health is extremely important, although the Hailsham students have a vague idea of what's going to happen to them, while The Island population lives in a far more sinister atmosphere. And in The Island, only rich people pay for clones, while in this book, it seems that the organs go to whoever needs them. The main villain in The Island believes the clones to be soulless, and that is exactly how the world needs to view them in order to accept their organs. But how do the clones live and not revolt, knowing they will die to help someone "more human" than they to live? What would you live for? What's to keep you from killing yourself to deprive society of your useful parts? What would happen to a clone that "deserts" his/her duties as a donor? Is there a strict punishment? What are the laws? So many unanswered questions.
Towards the end of the book, Miss Emily explains how the science for cloning evolved so quickly that no one had the time to think ethically about the whole idea: "When the great breakthroughs in science followed one after the other so rapidly, there wasn't time to take stock, to ask sensible questions..."
While reading that, I immediately thought of the chaos theoretician, Dr. Malcolm, from Jurassic Park, who had strong doubts about the safety and ethics of cloning dinosaurs. Of course cloning dinosaurs is not the same as cloning people, but it still opens the door for that (and also, the dinosaurs were a grave danger for humans). So I will end with a quote from Dr. Malcolm:
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
Book Review: Chilling
Summary: 5 Stars
Let me start by saying that my review might contain some plot spoilers. However I personally don't think that knowing the plot in advance will in any way diminish the enjoyment of this story. The beauty of this book is not in the plot, but in its exe ...more Let me start by saying that my review might contain some plot spoilers. However I personally don't think that knowing the plot in advance will in any way diminish the enjoyment of this story. The beauty of this book is not in the plot, but in its execution.
Another friendly warning: Never Let Me Go is for some reason often classified as science fiction. This is why so many readers end up disappointed I think. This novel is literary fiction at its finest. So if you look down on literary fiction and consider books written by authors like Ian McEwan, Margaret Atwood, and Jose Saramago pretentious, this is not a story for you.
Now to the novel itself. Kathy, now 31, is a former student of an English boarding school Hailsham. Hailsham is a school for kids with special purpose. All education in this school is geared towards conditioning its student to accept their "special" destiny as a given. As Kathy is getting ready to make her first donation while being a carer for other donors, she recounts her life in Hailsham and on her own, mostly in a form of anecdotes about herself and her best friends Ruth and Tommy, their rivalries, jealousies, and affection for each other. There is nothing particularly shocking, gruesome, or intense about Kathy's story, and yet it leaves you with a sense of being a part of a nightmare.
After reading quite a few reviews of the book, I can say that I loved the aspects of it that many abhorred. What other readers say about Kathy - her detachment, her lack of fire and rebellion, about broke my heart. What can be more heartbreaking than witnessing human lives wasted? Let me tell you - witnessing lives taken away from people who do not even realize what is being taken away from them, people who do not understand the value of their existence, people who do not know they have a right for more.
There is of course, much more to the story. The novel explores the futility of human life, its un-bargainable eventual "completion" and how we all choose to deal with the inevitable end. But for me personally the pain of Kathy's quiet resignation to her fate was what stood out and touched me the most.
In many ways Never Let Me Go reminded me of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Only Kathy is a step further from Offred. If Offred knows what horrors she is subjected to, but has no strength or will to change her circumstances, Kathy doesn't even know that her life "purpose," her destiny is inhumane. This work is also, to me, very reminiscent of Ian McEwan's Atonement. McEwan is a master of subtle build-up to an almost unbearable, life-shattering moment, but Ishiguro is a master of subtle telling without telling, foreshadowing, and emphasizing the gravity of the unsaid.
What else can I say about this novel? Never Let Me Go is a masterfully written work of fiction which raises questions of what it is to be human, what you choose to do in the face of an impending death and what happens when science is not accompanied by ethics. Subtle, eerie, chilling, and poignant. One of the best books I have read this year.