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Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro.  Knopf, 2005. 288 pp.
Reviewed by Alison Andrews
December 5, 2005

The setting of Never Let Me Go is recognizable to anyone familiar with books set in a British boarding school. The story centers around Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy, who attend Hailsham, an exclusive school whose spacious grounds encompass a sports pavilion, football fields, and a duck pond surrounded by winding paths. The students at Hailsham act very much like kids everywhere: they accept and reject one another into cliques, bicker and forgive each other, and obsess about the opposite sex. Yet they know that they are special, that they have a special purpose, although they do not know exactly what that purpose is. They know this because their guardians have told them they are special. The bulk of their instruction is in art, and their art is taken seriously - the best work is taken away to be put in a special gallery, which the students count as a great honor. There are rigorous weekly medical examinations; apparently their health is of highest importance.

Yet in the midst of all this privilege, questions begin to arise in the reader’s mind. Why do the students never mention a home life? Why do they own only a few things they have to buy with tokens at the monthly Sales? Why does Miss Lucy, one of the guardians, tell them that it is much, much worse for them to smoke than it was for her? Why are they so sealed off from the outside world? Just how “lucky” are these children?

The dark secret at the heart of Hailsham is only gradually revealed through Ishiguro’s indirect narration. The narrator, Kathy H., begins the story by telling us that she has been a “carer” for over 11 years. She has lasted an unusually long time in this role, but she has done a good job: “My donors have always tended to do much better than expected. Their recovery times have always been impressive, and hardly any of them have been classified as ‘agitated,’ even before fourth donation.” The mysterious terms, which Kathy doesn’t bother to explain, immediately invite the reader’s speculation, a process which will continue throughout the novel as we learn more about the meaning of these children’s lives.

Kathy’s purpose in telling her story is to recapture the time she spent at Hailsham and the way she and her friends came to understand their destiny. She and her best friends, bossy Ruth and sweet Tommy, are linked together throughout their lives, at Hailsham and beyond. The subtle way Ishiguro depicts the uncertain growth of emotions between the three of them, fraught as it is with the adolescent’s perpetual fear of rejection, is stunning in its apparent simplicity. Indeed, the strength of this writer’s work is in what he doesn’t tell us. Ishiguro is a master of understatement. For him, it is in the tiny moments, with so much left unsaid, that hearts are broken and lives are changed.

Each of Ishiguro’s novels occurs in a world entirely of the author’s making. While this novel is said to occur in England in the late 1990s, such an England did not in fact exist during that time period. While there are plenty of similarities—the students listen to tapes and wear polo shirts—the world these students inhabit is not ours, although as the novel progresses, it becomes uncomfortably easy to recognize the ways in which their world is a warped version of our own—or the way ours could come to resemble theirs, given a few ethical adjustments. It’s a chilling thought, to realize how easily science could lead us to view life as expendable, a slippery moral slope our society has already begun to slip down.

Because it is set in an alternate universe, many would call this novel science fiction. It is not. Nor is it an ordinary thriller, although it has plenty of suspense. In fact, the meaning of the book is not “solved” when the author finally unravels all the mysteries surrounding the students. On a deeper level, Never Let Me Go is a word-perfect portrayal of the loss of innocence and the betrayal of love. It is a book that never preaches, but it will haunt you long after you close its covers.

ninetyandnine.com

© 2005, Alison Andrews

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Alison Andrews lives near Fort Worth, Texas, with her husband and daughter. She and her husband lead the small group ministry for their church. At any given moment, she's either reading a classic novel or singing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" over and over...and over.