“Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro is a spellbinding dystopian novel that leaves the reader wondering from the very first page, but is also a beautiful story of human nature. The book was originally published on April 5, 2005.
The main character is Kathy H., who is telling the story as if she were having a conversation with the reader. She mainly recalls her time at Hailsham, the boarding school where she grew up. She speaks to the reader as someone who knows everything about her world which allows for revelations throughout the book as she is telling the story.
But Hailsham is not a normal boarding school. Its students are not really students at all, they are people raised there from infancy to one day donate their organs. They make up to four donations, after which they “complete,” or die. But many do not make it to their fourth, many complete after the second donation. Being on the fourth donation means they will certainly complete afterward. But, after they leave Hailsham they do not immediately start donating. After leaving Hailsham the donors go to the Cottages. Before they start donating they are first carers, people who take care of those who are currently donating, almost as a nurse. Kathy telling the story is in her twelfth year of being a carer and will start her donations at the end of the year.
Since Kathy believes this is the norm, the book mainly focuses on her friendships with Ruth and Tommy. Kathy and Ruth have a seemingly strained friendship throughout the book but are each other’s closest friend. Ruth wants to come across to others as special and sometimes fibs to prove it. Once when Hailsham had a sale, an event that the students could get outside-world items at, Ruth bought a pencil case. It was a very special pencil case that was coveted by all the other girls in their grade, but when asked about it, Ruth heavily implied that she had not gotten it herself, and instead was gifted it by one of their guardians as a show of favoritism. Kathy figured this out and privately called her out about it but backed up her story in front of the other students. They would not do things to make the other look bad in front of their peers or guardians, but they refuse to let the other have the upper hand in their friendship.
Kathy and Tommy were friends and would theorize with each other about the strange events of their rearing. When he was younger, Tommy frequently was in a fit of rage because of teasing and exclusion from other students. He was teased and excluded mostly because he would not make any art for the school exchanges, an event where students would swap art to have in personal collections, which were some of the only things of their own they could keep. As the donors stay at Hailsham from infancy until when they leave for the Cottages, sales and exchanges were the only time they could get any personal items, and when Tommy did not participate he was alienated from the others. During one of these fits, after he was left out of football, Kathy went up to him and tried to calm him down. This was the start of their friendship and an aspect of Tommy being included at Hailsham and the end of his rages.
When they were teenagers Ruth and Tommy started dating, even though most expected it to be Kathy and Tommy. Ruth even confessed later on that she purposely kept Kathy and Tommy apart, knowing it should have been them. The trio’s dynamic leaves the reader at times both cringing from second-hand embarrassment and laughing along with the group.
Ishiguro does a great job of making the story more about the characters and less about the strange aspects of their world, which would have been very easy. His writing draws the reader in and makes the weirdest parts of the story seem normal, a hard task given that the story is about people raised only for their organs. I give this book a 5/5.
