Never Let Me Go
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| First edition cover | |
| Author | Kazuo Ishiguro |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Dystopian, Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Faber and Faber |
| Released | 2005 |
| Media Type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 1-4000-4339-5 (first edition, hardback) |
Never Let Me Go is a 2005 novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. It was shortlisted for the 2005 Booker Prize and for the 2006 Arthur C. Clarke Award. Time Magazine named it the best fiction novel of 2005 and included it in All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels. While it contains many tropes generally associated with science fiction, it was marketed as mainstream literature.
The novel is narrated by Kathy H. She recalls her childhood at a strange boarding school, particularly her friendship with several other students. As the novel unfolds, the reader gradually sees how certain interconnected circumstances of her upbringing become fundamental to her adult life.
[edit] Plot summary
The novel tells us about the abnormal childhood of Kathy H., pivoting around a strange boarding school, and eventually the narration explores her adult life. The entire narrative takes place in a dystopian late 20th century Britain, a place where humans are cloned outside the public eye to provide necessary organs for unhealthy individuals. As with Ishiguro’s other works, the author is primarily focused on developing complex characters with transparent emotions.
The novel is divided in three parts, chronicling the three phases of the lives of its main characters.
The first part is set in Hailsham, a boarding school where the children are brought up and educated. The teachers mysteriously encourage the students to produce various forms of art. The best works are chosen by a woman known only as Madame and are said to be collected in a gallery.
While the students of Hailsham are often cliquey, capricious and cruel, the three main characters - Ruth, Tommy and Kathy - develop a stable friendship during this time.
Kathy is the first person narrator of the story; she is a rather shy girl with some romantic dreams of becoming a mother when she grows up, even if she already knows this to be impossible. Tommy is an isolated boy who has difficulty in relating to others and is often the target of bullies. Ruth is an extroverted girl with strong opinions.
In the second part the characters, now grown to young adults, move to the Cottages, residential complexes where they start to have contacts with the external world and they are relatively free to do what they want. A romantic relation starts between Ruth and Tommy, while Kathy explores her sexuality but without forming any stable relationship.
The third part describes the characters becoming donors (Tommy and Ruth) and carers (Kathy). Kathy takes care first of Ruth and then, after she completes (that is, dies), of Tommy. Encouraged by Ruth's last wishes, Kathy and Tommy go to visit Madame, where they also meet their old headmistress. At this time, they learn why artistic production had always been emphasized at Hailsham: the teachers wanted to prove that the clones have souls and thus improve their condition in society. The clones learn that Hailsham was only one of many such schools operating throughout the country and that conditions were better there than at any other school. The teachers failed in their attempts to make the clones palatable to society, and Hailsham was closed down. The novel closes, after the death of Tommy, on a note of sad resignation.
The novel's name comes from a song on an American cassette tape within the novel called Songs After Dark by a fictional singer called Judy Bridgewater. Kathy bought the tape during a swap meet-type event at Hailsham. Thinking that it was song from a mother to a baby, Kathy liked to dance around holding a pillow and crooning "baby, never let me go". She once saw Madame watching her with a sad expression and assumed that she shared the song's sad feelings. Much later, she asked Madame about it and learned that her sad expression had an entirely different source: the knowledge that the clones would never have a chance to fall in love outside of their insular world.
[edit] Major themes
The central issue of free will is not even pondered by any of the novel’s characters. As with other fictional dystopias, the boarding school of Never Let Me Go subtly encourages emotional repression, just as it gently obscures the nature of the clones' relationship to the outside world. The text might be interpreted as a commentary on the ultimate consequences of passivity in the face of societal oppression and inequity, as well as on the dangerous allure of accepting routines and "duties" that serve to maintain an unjust status quo.
