This is a tough review to write without including spoilers. At first glance, a simple English boarding school novel, Never Let Me Go is actually a mystery and an exploration of humanity itself. This is a book that is simultaneously depressing and hopeful. Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth spend the novel — and their lives — searching for meaning and fulfillment in a finite, doomed existence. They search in the places we all do: art, love, belief in a greater plan, nostalgia. But ultimately, how far can any of us push back against fate itself?
From the first chapters of Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro makes it clear that the Hailsham students are special. The mystery gradually unfolds as Kathy recalls her childhood at the school. Why, at 31, does Kathy have more yesterdays than tomorrows? Why does the mysterious Madame gather the students’ artwork for her gallery? Why do none of the students know or have anything outside their lives at Hailsham? These questions are the bait Ishiguro throws at the readers to hook us on this story, but we stay long after we get the answers because we grow attached to these characters. It’s hard to follow Kathy and Tommy in particular and not want them to be happy.
I was a bit lukewarm on the middle section of this book. Part of it was that, with the mystery revealed, the pacing stalled out a bit. Another part of it is that, as fantastic a storyteller and writer as Ishiguro is, I’m always a bit averse to novels written in such spare and, dare I say, clinical prose. I’m a fan of heightened reality and sentimentality, and I just don’t think that’s Ishiguro’s style.
That said, Chapter 22 of this book, in which Kathy and Tommy visit the aged Madame and Miss Emily, was one of the saddest and most compelling chapters of a book I have read in some time. One of the core themes of Never Let Me Go is what it means to be human, and how much humanity are we willing to sacrifice for our own individual or societal well-being and advancement? When Miss Emily explains the fate of Hailsham to the former students, I couldn’t help but think of animal cruelty, labor exploitation, and a number of other atrocities that even the most “advanced” societies allow to persist. In addition to that, Ishiguro also forces his characters — and readers — to grapple with the reality that we live imperfect lives where we are subject to oppressive systems, personal misfortunate, and all manner of things that seem unfair.
“I can see,” Miss Emily said, “that it might look as though you were simply pawns in a game. It can certainly be looked at like that. But think of it. You were lucky pawns. There was a certain climate, and now it’s gone. You have to accept that sometimes that’s how things happen in the world. People’s opinions, their feelings, they go one way, then the other. It just so happens you grew up at a certain point in this process.”
“It might just be some trend that came and went,” [Kathy] said. “But for us, it’s our life.”
“Yes, that’s true. But think of it. You were better off than many who came before you. And who knows what those who come after you will have to face […]”
The Once and Future Lit 