Never Let Me Go

by Kazuo Ishiguro

288 pages

English language

Published Oct. 28, 2006 by Vintage International.

ISBN:: 978-1-4000-7877-6
OCLC Number:: 70236408

(7 reviews)

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans, comes an unforgettable edge-of-your-seat mystery that is at once heartbreakingly tender and morally courageous about what it means to be human. Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it's only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

13 editions

Nathan John Cooper reviewed Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

A Memory

4 stars

Content warning Spoiler Alert.

Apparently, when I finished this book, I never wrote a review... which is insane to think about but I'll try and write one now (despite it being around a year later). I loved this story. As a British teenager I have always loved the platonic and romantic dynamic that boarding schools encourage and, as such, thoroughly enjoyed how different relations played out throughout this tale. Furthermore, the addition of science-fiction elements allowed for the exemplification of narrative elements and enigmas ergo drawing the audience even further into the strange world of Hailsham. I will likely revisit this book many times throughout my life to feel what I felt whilst reading it for the first time; to walk the halls of Hailsham; to watch the football games on the field; to stare into the ambiguous forest across the accommodation windows.

Thom reviewed Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Review of 'Never Let Me Go' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Saw the movie first, so the various reveals that crop up throughout the story were not hidden to me. They didn't make the film any better, and the same could be said of the book.

The biggest question in my mind is whether to tag the narrator as unreliable. The entire story is told from her perspective, and bounces around as she remembers various parts to her narrative. Unfortunately it is pretty obvious this is Ishiguro's method for hiding some things until revealed later.

It works as a story, and either the children are all oblivious to their situation or the author didn't want to write about the conflict. Either way, it's a depressing book which was just "okay".