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Never Let Me Go follows the lives of Kathy and her friends growing up in Hailsham, a ‘special’ boarding school in England in the 1990s where they begin their journey to eventually become donors. We learn that Kathy is an donor carer of 12 years and soon to become an organ donor herself, fulfilling her ‘destiny’, as she knows it. The novel plays with themes of mortality, love and sex, the segregation and treatment of those we see as different in society. Kathy writes her life growing up from a much older perspective and the book grapples with conflict of seeing events from years ago in a different light due to hindsight.
This book has been in my to-be-read pile for some time now, especially since I naturally gravitate towards books set in England, largely because I prefer that homely feel that I experience from them. However, after finishing the novel, I felt oddly numb to it and utterly disconnected with the ending, with it feeling very forced and rushed. I was left with more questions at the end than I would’ve liked and a sinking feeling in my stomach of a book that had so much potential in theory that failed in practice.
Firstly, the style of writing was not for me – the conversational style and perhaps childish nature of expression made the book feel like it should’ve been aimed at a younger audience, despite the premise of the story being a fairly mature one. The approach of writing ‘This happened to me today in this room in this building’ and then describing the building and then the situation felt completely unnatural, as if Ishiguro was checking things off a list of things to describe in every setting. Not only was it a little annoying to read but it was difficult to see the characters as anything close to mature. This might have been because they were raised and educated in Hailsham, a very privileged school, making them naïve to the wider world, however it ultimately didn’t make the characters very relatable or enjoyable to read.
This is coupled with the fact that the three main characters aren’t even really all that interesting. Other than the fact that Ishiguro is very capable in depicting the characters emotions well, the characters lack depth, complexity and are all rather boring. Ruth, an obnoxious teenager who lies frequently to seem superior to her colleagues is faced with the reality that her life is not going to be anything out of the ordinary. Tommy, who doesn’t seem to be able to form an opinion of his own, spends his time analysing his experiences at Hailsham only for it to be wasted with the reality that their lives are meant only for the health of others.. Kathy, the protagonist, has no hopes or dreams for the future and the annoying thing about her character is she doesn’t seem to be fully formed. In reality, her character is overly passive; she knows her place and her duty and she’ll do it to the best of her ability, but Ishiguro still attempts to present her as a intelligent and critical character merely to drive the story forward and create moral complications so the reader can form questions of their own. This created a dichotomy in Kathy who is both passive and curious, characteristics that are contracting.
Additionally, while this book has been deemed a science fiction novel, often compared to Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale I am unsure if the book even qualifies for science fiction because while the bigger picture was the characters being organ donors and already having their life planned out for them, the organ donation conversation never seemed to ever take full control of the conversations the characters were having or the storyline. For example, there is an incident where they travel to a different city in the country for reasons that are very obviously linked to the organ donation process, and the characters are so close to actually having a genuine conversation about their futures, but it results, as always, in an irrelevant argument; a clash of personalities. This scenario is repeated several times where the reader thinks they’re going to witness these people actually coming face-to-face with their fate and it falls through as quickly as it builds up.
This also leads to my next criticism that we are never given a contrast of Hailsham to the real world or even to other institutions where they raise the donor children. We are constantly reminded that the children of Hailsham are special and there’s obviously tension between Hailsham students and others, but there is only one incident where we truly find out what other students experiencing are growing up. This lack of dimension to the outside world makes the storyline less plausible because we must take the characters word for granted on how they see the world around them which has very clearly been shaped by their experience at Hailsham. The story would have been far more interesting if it followed the lives of other donor children who perhaps did not have a privileged position and a more jaded outlook on their lives.
Lastly, every instance where the reader is presented with a new piece of information regarding the donation process is treated as a casual remark within the tone of the story. The organ donation is originally mentioned briefly in conversation when discussing what will happen once they turn sixteen; the possibility of death after certain donations is once again a casual remark. However, the final ‘shock’ that readers are supposed to experience in the last few chapters in reality doesn’t come as a surprise and just leads to further disappointment. The not-so-subtle hints given throughout the book ruin the outcome for the reader because it can be predicted about a third into the book. The same way that the characters are faced with the reality that there is nothing exciting to happen is reflected in the lack of surprise at the ending of the book.
Overall, I would recommend this book if you are someone who wishes to write books in the dystopian genre as a means of perhaps comparing several books to each other and finding something that works for you, but other than that, I would thoroughly discourage people from reading this book thinking it is going to be a well developed science fiction book that advertises itself as dealing with bigger themes than the book can manage in practice.
Rating: ⭐⭐