Book Review: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Wow.  Never Let Me Go has been coming up on my "suggested for you" list on Amazon for a while but I was reluctant to buy it at full price.  A price reduction (now $9.99) and my Amazon gift card convinced me to finally download this book and I'm seriously glad I did.

Now that I'm finished I have SO many questions.  Don't read this book if you expect everything to be wrapped up in a neat little bow.  I don't want to spoil anything, but holy heck!

I'm not great at describing plots so this is taken from Amazon.com's review:

"All children should believe they are special. But the students of Hailsham, an elite school in the English countryside, are so special that visitors shun them, and only by rumor and the occasional fleeting remark by a teacher do they discover their unconventional origins and strange destiny. Kazuo Ishiguro's sixth novel, Never Let Me Go, is a masterpiece of indirection. Like the students of Hailsham, readers are "told but not told" what is going on and should be allowed to discover the secrets of Hailsham and the truth about these children on their own.

Offsetting the bizarreness of these revelations is the placid, measured voice of the narrator, Kathy H., a 31-year-old Hailsham alumna who, at the close of the 1990s, is consciously ending one phase of her life and beginning another. She is in a reflective mood, and recounts not only her childhood memories, but her quest in adulthood to find out more about Hailsham and the idealistic women who ran it. Although often poignant, Kathy's matter-of-fact narration blunts the sharper emotional effects you might expect in a novel that deals with illness, self-sacrifice, and the severe restriction of personal freedoms. As in Ishiguro's best-known work, The Remains of the Day, only after closing the book do you absorb the magnitude of what his characters endure."

So basically these kids grow up knowing they have a certain future but don't really grasp what this means.  The main characters aren't exactly likable - the narrator Kathy lacks introspection and is a bit of a follower and her best friend Ruth is a dreamer and a leader but also a manipulative little bitch. The character Tommy is more than a little bit slow.  But seeing these character's many flaws makes the reality of what they have to endure all the more tragic and poignant.

Read it and weep.  Or just scratch your head.  You will probably enjoy it.