Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro was a slow read, but I’m glad I stuck with it and finished it. If you remember last time I tried to read one of his books and ended up stopping cause it was so slow. I’m beginning to think that Ishiguro is just very slow paced and you must continue reading to get to the good stuff. Perhaps one day, I will pick up When We Were Orphans and soldier through it.

The story starts out with Kathy H. reminiscing about her days at Hailsham, a private school in England. She talks about her experience growing up at Hailsham and her circle of friends, which include Ruth and Tommy. There is a sense that something is strange about Hailsham, that it’s not a typical school. The students are aware that they are different from others, but Ishiguro never reveals what makes these students unusual.

The students are obsessed with getting their artwork in The Gallery. Every so often a woman they call, Madame, comes and picks the best pieces of art and the children have no clue what she does with it and never question the guardians about it.

The book follows Kathy, Ruth and Tommy after they leave Hailsham to a place called The Cottages before they begin their training as carer’s. There is tension between Kathy and her friends. Ruth and Tommy are now a couple and it adds a weird dynamic between the trio. Eventually the trio splits up to begin their training and they all leave on bad terms.

Here Ishiguro slowly discloses that the Kathy and the others will one day become carers and then donors. Kathy is a clone and was raised to donate her organs, but before one becomes a donor, they train as a carer, who takes care of the donors. Kathy is an excellent carer and has not yet become a donor. She takes on the task for caring for Ruth and Tommy.

Finally everything begins to make sense to the reader and my earlier perception of Hailsham changes. We learn that Hailsham was created to raise the “students” in a humane environment. Before Hailsham, “students” were reared in ugly conditions and treated more like test tube experiments. We also learn the significance of The Gallery. As one of their guardians put it, “We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.”

This book was really interesting and covered the topic of cloning in a very different way. Never Let Me Go does not read like a science fiction novel, and at first totally leaves you guessing to where this book is going. Ishiguro solely focuses on the relationship between Kathy and her friends displaying their humanity before he reveals what they really are.

The book made me think of the movie, The Island except that the biggest difference is that the students were always innately aware of what their purpose is life was. Their guardians never came straight out and told them, but always dropped hints to what they were raised to do. The students never questioned their destiny or Hailsham, until now. Miss Emily (a guardian) states,

“Look at you both now! You built your lives on what we gave you.
You wouldn’t be who you are today if we had not protected you. You
wouldn’t have become absorbed in your lessons, you wouldn’t have lost yourselves in you art and your writing. Why should you have done, knowing what lay in
store for each of you? You would have told us it was all pointless, and
how could we have argued with you?”

The book makes me wonder if one day we will start to clone ourselves to harvest our organs. With the advances already made with cloning it doesn’t seem like a far-off possibility, but with what consequences.