Helpful Score: 4
This book absolutely should have won the Hugo award for 2006. It wasn't
nominated. Why? Because it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize? Because
the author's other novels aren't science fiction? I don't know. But it is
definitely the most significant, disturbing, haunting - and enjoyable -
recent SF novel that I have read.
In an alternate-reality England of the 1990s, a woman named Kathy
reminisces about her childhood at a school called Hailsham. Her experiences, at first, are those that might seem normal both the joys and travails to anyone familiar with British boarding schools. And of course, Kathy does perceive her experiences as having been normal, because, like everyone, she sees her past only in the context of her own experiences. But, as we quickly realize, from our perspective, Kathys life is not normal at all. She, and all the students at Hailsham, are clones created solely for the purpose of organ donation.
Whats exceptional about this book it how Ishiguro created a tense book, with a creeping sensation of growing horror, solely through the voice and perceptions of Kathy who, although intelligent and creative, is essentially a passive character, a product of lifelong conditioning and training to accept her fate as inevitable duty.
Nearly everything is told to the reader between the lines The characters themselves are naiively unaware of the dreadful pathos of their lives. We never even really see the villains in this society (although the reader is led to think of questions of bioethics and what people in our own reality are also willing to do - people in this world do already die because others want their healthy organs).
The title works as a metaphor for the whole book, in a way if we asked Kathy what Never Let Me Go means, she would tell you it was the title of a song on a secondhand tape that she listened to (and misunderstood) as a girl but as readers, we can see that it refers to the creation of a situation where, even without guards or electrified fences, human beings are trapped so deeply by their own selves that the concept of fleeing a dreadful end (which they do realize is dreadful) doesnt once even occur to them.
It is clear that it has occurred to Ishiguro, however, when he gives us a scene where children are discussing prison camps with electrified fences, and the guardians are explicitly uncomfortable. The fences around these people are not electrified, nor tangible, but they are just as real - and they continue to exist even when physical 'freedom' is granted.
nominated. Why? Because it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize? Because
the author's other novels aren't science fiction? I don't know. But it is
definitely the most significant, disturbing, haunting - and enjoyable -
recent SF novel that I have read.
In an alternate-reality England of the 1990s, a woman named Kathy
reminisces about her childhood at a school called Hailsham. Her experiences, at first, are those that might seem normal both the joys and travails to anyone familiar with British boarding schools. And of course, Kathy does perceive her experiences as having been normal, because, like everyone, she sees her past only in the context of her own experiences. But, as we quickly realize, from our perspective, Kathys life is not normal at all. She, and all the students at Hailsham, are clones created solely for the purpose of organ donation.
Whats exceptional about this book it how Ishiguro created a tense book, with a creeping sensation of growing horror, solely through the voice and perceptions of Kathy who, although intelligent and creative, is essentially a passive character, a product of lifelong conditioning and training to accept her fate as inevitable duty.
Nearly everything is told to the reader between the lines The characters themselves are naiively unaware of the dreadful pathos of their lives. We never even really see the villains in this society (although the reader is led to think of questions of bioethics and what people in our own reality are also willing to do - people in this world do already die because others want their healthy organs).
The title works as a metaphor for the whole book, in a way if we asked Kathy what Never Let Me Go means, she would tell you it was the title of a song on a secondhand tape that she listened to (and misunderstood) as a girl but as readers, we can see that it refers to the creation of a situation where, even without guards or electrified fences, human beings are trapped so deeply by their own selves that the concept of fleeing a dreadful end (which they do realize is dreadful) doesnt once even occur to them.
It is clear that it has occurred to Ishiguro, however, when he gives us a scene where children are discussing prison camps with electrified fences, and the guardians are explicitly uncomfortable. The fences around these people are not electrified, nor tangible, but they are just as real - and they continue to exist even when physical 'freedom' is granted.
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