Never Let Me Go

Author: Kazuo Ishiguro

Acquired in: August 2020

This pandemic has brought about a change in me- I’ve started experimenting. When the days feel like an eternity, it’s difficult to resist the temptation of buying books that differ from your tastes, in an attempt to stop the decline from lucid human to limp vegetable. Now, my library is quite diverse. Dystopia, crime, concentration camps, family stories or Hawaii? You name it- maybe I have it. Though, much to my exasperation, most of the books I come across these days have sad endings, despite all my efforts to snag something cheery. ‘Tis not the season to be happy, it seems. 

After reading Never Let Me Go, I felt the same as when I finished Madame Bovary: depressed, yet filled with the characteristic satisfaction one feels after reading a book with a solid storyline. The striking plot draws your attention; it takes place in the 1950s to 1990s in England, only that human cloning occurs on a massive scale. In this historical dystopia, humans can live beyond their expected lifespan, thanks to a medical breakthrough, which, although, comes at the cost of hundreds of lives. 

Kathy H. is a young woman who works as a ‘carer’ for those clones who have donated organs. In this book, she gives us a glance into her life as a clone and her experiences of being a carer for two close friends, Ruth and Tommy. The story begins with her childhood, spent in a boarding school called Hailsham, which had the feel of a typical elite English boarding school to it. Presided over by strict teachers who censored the students’ lives, they never had a notion of their destiny, which was decided for them by others. An enigmatic Frenchwoman, ‘Madame’, collects the best of the artwork which the students make and displays these works in a gallery for reasons withheld from the students. Only years later do Kathy and Tommy find out that collecting their artwork was a bid to turn around their fates; however, those attempts by Madame and the other teachers failed. As they leave school, they form relationships and make plans of bright futures, though, all these are brought to an end as one by one, they get called up to fulfil their purposes.

The book is perhaps trying to convey that humanity or the innate feelings make us human fade away as science with its insensitivity takes over the world. The humans in the book have full knowledge of the methods taken to extend their lives. Despite knowing this, they turn a blind eye to the fact that this reduces clones to the state of slaughter animals, meekly led to die. In this twisted and thankfully, fictional world, will the clones have no release? I wondered as I finished the book.

Ishiguro has written well; the poignant lines delivered a hard-hitting message. I wish that Kathy and Tommy eventually did end up living long lives together, but of course, I’m a magnet for sad endings. But I don’t regret reading it, and maybe, you wouldn’t too.

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