Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro
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Book Reviews of Never Let Me Go
Book Review: Stockholm Syndrome and the Illusion of Freedom
Summary: 4 Stars
This was the first Ishiguro book I'd read and left me wanting more. For one, it's a page turner. The reader is left to wonder at the meaning of words sprinkled casually by the narrator, and the childhood events which hold something more than can be immediately grasped. Just as the "secrets" are unveiled to the narrator and her peers, secrets whose meanings they realize they already half knew, so is the mystery revealed to the reader. Without spoiling the plot for new readers, Ishiguro manages to give just enough data so that by the time we learn what's really going on, we're left marveling at how we didn't guess it in the first place.
In Never Let Me Go Ishiguro distills much about the human life cycle in a shortened life spans of its main characters. By watching how they deal with their own mortality and the conditions of their existence, the reader can't help but draw the connections to his or her own life. I think this was Ishiguro's intention, to show the complacency we demonstrate in our lives. In short, we are slaves that think we are free. We are asleep, dreaming we are awake. The themes echo those of the mystic-philosopher George Gurdjieff, so well presented in Ouspensky's wonderful In Search of the Miraculous.
The book is a meditation on death and freedom. What does it mean to be free? How can we be free when we are not even aware of the prison in which we find ourselves? For the narrator and her friends, their prison is accepted as their lot in life. They do not fight it, nor do they even realize what prisoners they are. They live and die according to a will that is not their own, and they do not fight. The book is depressing in this regard, but the truth of the matter is that we are often no better off. Without the perspective necessary, we cannot see the limits of our freedom, and thus cannot do anything to expand those limits. Ishiguro doesn't give his characters a way out. They live to the best of their abilities within the limits of their environment, but cannot transcend that environment. Machines in the cog work of larger machine. In this sense Ishiguro presents a fine allegory for life, albeit without the hope offered by a writer like Gurdjieff.
Book Review: Let's Get Real
Summary: 2 Stars
I cannot share the enthusiasm for this novel that some have expressed here. In my view, Ishiguro's plot is thin, his characters are flat -- take a look at the large-eyed young woman represented on the cover: is she a robot, a Stepford wife of the English variety perhaps? -- to the point that they come across as mostly inhuman, and the author barely explores the ethical issue -- are there limits on the uses of science that society should respect? -- which he raises.
Let's start with the open secret that this is a novel about cloned human beings. You will realize that long before the word "clones" is ever used, about twenty pages before the end, and that suggests a problem with the author's pacing or foreshadowing. The story is told from the point of view of Kathy, a young graduate of Hailsham (does that Dickensian name indicate the author's take on the ethical issue: will any good ever come from a sham?), an English boarding school now closed. Hailsham's students and graduates are unusually compliant souls. They do what they're told, which is strange considering that there is no mention of how they were socialized prior to their arrival at Hailsham. They accept their lot with a minimum of struggle or angst. Meanwhile, their "guardians" -- the teachers at Hailsham -- impose various rules, collect samples of the students' artwork for mysterious purposes, and wrestle with inner demons of their own.
The elegiac mood which some have praised in this work stems from the inevitability of its central characters' barren lives. There is little dramatic tension or movement in the novel. Once the secret is formally revealed, the book just fades away. To me this is a weakness, not a strength.
Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day was widely hailed -- there's that word again -- as a semi-outsider's rejection of the English class system and of its underlings' clinging to their place in society long after their place achieved any benefit for them. Never Let Me Go can be read for a similar subtext. Only a cruel and dying society would create human beings, with or without souls, to be exploited. For me there is too little insight in that vision, and Ishiguro's literary style is too unadorned to make up for his paucity of ideas.
Book Review: A Novel That Won't Let YOU Go!
Summary: 4 Stars
SPOILER ALERT: It is impossible to truly review this interesting novel without revealing some of the revelations within the final chapters.
Kazuo Ishiguro has written a masterful and intriguing novel that begins like an essay in British manners (within a Private School) and ends with a commentary on mankind, existence and the nature of the soul.
For most of the novel, I admit, I became restless as many of the characters were not very interesting and not much happend in way of major plot development. If not for the occasional mention or inference of something that didn't quite ring true with modern society as we know it - I would have summed the book up as a boring novel of class distinctions within a British Private school. It is only when you realize what the school actually is and who the "students" are that the entire structure of the novel begins to take form.
Having read and watched too much Sci-Fi in my time I actually predicted the ending/resolution long before I read the final chapters. This still did not protect me from the haunting power of this novel which still stays with me and even invaded my dreams. To discover that the "students" are actually "clones" being developed for mankind's use in permanently eliminating all disease and illness is unsettling - especially since the students are almost all entirely unaware of this fact.
Upon this revelation, it made me think of the novel/film "Blade Runner", where the Replicants who are created exist in a world where they continually try to understand their own humanity or lack thereof as well as their own mortality. I've seen other reviwers compare this novel to "1984" by Orwell - but that is too simple a comparison - "Never Let Me Go" goes much deeper. What I found most interesting is that the novel was written in 2005 after a film called "The Island" (starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johannson) was released. That film dealt with clones realizing their own existence and fighting for survival instead of being used for experimental and research purpsoses. Because of my knowledge of this film, I did not find Ishiguro's theme to be very original. However, this in no way took away from the impact this haunting novel had on me.
Book Review: Compelling but ultimately disappointing
Summary: 3 Stars
Warning: spoiler
While this book is completely compelling while reading it, and keeps the plot gradually unfurling up to the end, it is ultimately disappointing. It makes absolutely no logical sense in the end, if you think about it for 5 minutes.
The whole concept of 4 staged donations and carers on which the plot is based would have no place in a society that raised clones simply to use their organs. Why would they bother to take one organ at a time and pay the expenses of recovery, carers, food, clothing, shelter, etc. for years on end? They would simply have harvested all the important organs at once and been done with it.
I know, this isn't the real world, and the book is all about suspense, characterization, imbuing the ordinary with nuance and mystery, and is not intended to be logical in any sense, but in my opinion, if you are going to try to write something thought-provoking, it needs to stand up to some thought without completely crumbling into an impossible illogicality.
The characters were shown to have every human attribute except fertility and their complete passivity and resignation to their fate just seemed completely contradictory to the rest of their character.
There were many things that seemed "off" emotionally. The people who were "helping" the clones expressed extreme fear and repugnance for them, and this also didn't ring true to me - if they saw the clones as human and having a soul, what was the source of their fear and repulsion? None of it rang true or seemed emotionally realistic in the end, particularly after the explanations given by the two guardians in the climactic scene.
I was reminded of the recent movie The Island about clones with a similar purpose who find out what they are and immediately start planning an escape from their fate. This book couldn't be further from that mindset - and while that movie wasn't realistic by any means, it at least seemed more emotionally authentic.
We are supposed to be moved by the fate of the three characters, or what is the point of the book? But because none of the facts of their life make any sense in the end, I just felt manipulated and strung along.
Book Review: Not what I wanted... but somehow better
Summary: 5 Stars
I should say upfront that this book was not what I expected. I had heard of it and knew it had received critical praise, so I picked it up. Within a few pages it became clear that this was a science-fiction/dystopian/alternate reality novel, which was not at all apparent from the summary on the back. At this point, I was pretty irritated because I do not usually enjoy those types of novels.
Fortunately, I stuck it out with this book and it ended up being rewarding. Stylistically, this is a quick read; the prose is deft, airy, and never pretentious or dense. Ishiguro has an uncanny knack for portraying the sometimes bewildering mood swings and outbursts of teenagers with empathy. As someone who was a teenage girl myself not long ago, his realism and insight impressed me and I found the characters almost painfully believable.
As I said, I knew very little about the book when I bought it, but it didn't take long for me to become ensnared in the web of dark fatalism that surrounds the plot. Believing in the characters just exacerbated my anxiety for them, and the author did a good job of manipulating the reader's emotions enough to cause suspense and yet make the ending seem natural and even inevitable. My emotional reaction to this book was very intense, which I wasn't expecting at all. However light it may be in style, it is definitely not so in theme or subject matter. It reminds me of Joyce Carol Oates's comments about Wuthering Heights, which she says tests how far we go in interpreting Heathcliff's ostensible villainy as tragic heroism to satisfy our romantic impulses; this is a book that made me aware of how hard I was hoping for a happy ending or deus ex machina, however ridiculous.
Overall, despite the sci-fi elements and bioethics issues raised, this is at heart a novel with very humanistic themes that doesn't get unduly weighed down by the details of its alternative reality. This might disappoint some who are looking for an immersive science fiction experience, but it makes the unusual themes you don't normally see outside of that genre more accessible to readers like myself.