Never Let Me Go

by Kazuo Ishiguro

282 pages

English language

Published 2006 by Vintage Books / Random House.

ISBN:: 978-0-571-22413-5
Goodreads:: 102927

(4 reviews)

Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, Never Let Me Go dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life.

6 editions

Amber Herbert reviewed Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Another Novel That Fails to Live Up to the Hype

3 stars

There are many glimmers of brilliance in this novel. The philosophical themes are prominent but obvious and lacking the depth needed to make an emotional impact. The characters are nuanced enough to tell them apart and give them personalities with which to fall in step beside, but I never once cared what happened to Kathy or Tommy or Ruth. The sci-fi elements are subdued, falling behind the themes of destiny and fulfillment. The prose is serviceable but nothing worth praising. Much like Klara and the Sun, I neither understand the hype nor believe it offers anything profound to speculative fiction as a whole. While not a terrible book, I stopped reading around the 50% mark.

phonner reviewed Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Review of "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro

5 stars

A beautiful, engrossing, haunting story. The innocence of the narrator and her vivid coming of age stories drift toward unsettling resolutions that reveal themselves slowly. But like the characters in the book, we knew what was coming all along.

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.

puercomal

rated it

Jan. 24, 2015