Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go
And if you want to read this book, I suggest that you stop here and go pick it up. There’s no way I can write about Never Let Me Go without revealing an early, major plot twist, and the experience of reading the novel will be much more enjoyable if you either figure it out (it’s not that hard) or if you come let the big revelation take you by surprise.
It turns out that Never Let Me Go is set in an alternate universe that is very much like our own but for one detail: Human clones are created and raised to adulthood so that their vital organs may be harvested for donations to conventionally-created humans. The three central characters, including the narrator, are all such clones, being raised in one of the few enlightened wards for these human livestock, and the narrator takes us back to their childhood, then adolescence (including the time when they learn their ultimate fate), then to the period of their “donations.”
The novel’s two parts – the dystopic horror story and the romantic tragedy – are perfectly integrated, but they weren’t equally effective. The romantic tragedy fell short for me; Kathy, her moody and often malicious friend Ruth, and the slightly simple but passionate Tommy end up in a sort of love triangle, and we’re to understand that Kathy and Tommy are in love with each other but are kept apart to a degree by Ruth. That feeling never came through in the characters’ words or actions, or even Kathy’s thoughts; she and Tommy are clearly friends, with a bond stronger than that between Tommy and Ruth, who are an actual couple during part of their time in boarding school and their time in the “cottages” where they spend their college-aged years. Kathy’s feelings towards Tommy seem to range from friendship to an almost older sister/younger brother dynamic, but romantic love didn’t come through until the two do become a couple as adults, when Tommy has begun his donations and Kathy is a “carer,” a visiting nurse to donors who will eventually begin her donations after a few years in carer service.
On the other hand, the quasi-morality play which Ishiguro presents to the reader is powerful and disturbing. The clones themselves seem to accept their fate without overtly questioning it – Ruth at one point asks, “It’s what we’re supposed to be doing, isn’t it?” – yet they show clear signs of humanity as well, falling in love and hoping they can find a way to defer their donation periods to enjoy a brief period with their mates, thinking and dreaming about living normal lives with normal jobs (Ruth dreams of having a routine 9-to-5 office job), and looking for the “possible” from whom they were cloned (much as an adopted or abandoned child might look for his/her biological parents). There are even discussions of whether the clones themselves have “souls” – Ishiguro seems to presume that they do, at least within the story’s context – and we see glimpses of the ethical discussions that go on in the fictional world of how to treat these clones: as people or as livestock (my word, not Ishiguro’s). Ishiguro even presents us with an argument that might sound very familiar to anyone who is squeamish about the idea of meat and poultry coming from the deaths of living creatures when he has one of the school’s teachers explain that people want organs to save the lives of their loved ones so long as they don’t have to know anything about where the organs come from.
It’s an uncomfortable read, but despite the slight failure of the romantic tragedy to capture my interest, it’s a riveting one that you probably won’t be able to put down once you’ve started it. I couldn’t, even though at times I wanted to once I realized that something was seriously amiss in the novel’s world, and that these characters were, by and large, just accepting their fates. It will force you to consider questions you’d rather not try to answer, because to many of them, you won’t find answers you like.
I will definitely put this on my list. I absolutely loved Remains of the Day. Was comparable to that in quality?
Haven’t read it, but when TIME did its top 100 novels list, this was on it (and RotD wasn’t).
Man, I loved this book so much. One of those books I couldn’t stop proselytizing about to all my friends ’cause I loved it so. You’ve read Middlesex, haven’t you? I think you mentioned it once in a chat.
Jesse G: I think it’s better than Remains of the Day. Certainly you won’t be disappointed. It’s got the same amazingly keen observations about human nature that Ishiguro’s known for, but it’s not about butlers. That’s gotta be an improvement, right?
I read RotD and Ishiguro’s An Artist in a Floating World in my AP English Class – I remember liking Artist quite a bit better. I recommend it if you wanted to read some additional Ishiguro.
Thanks for the recommendations guys, I will definitely look out for his other novels. Also, and this is somewhat random, has anyone read the Murakami book about the Sarin Gas attack on the Tokyo subway? I have heard good things but wanted to hear from others.
I read this book last year, and I felt the weight of pretension oppressing me throughout the experience. I also felt a sense of disconnectedness, in that the psychology of the characters was simply wrong.
Oddly, Philip K. Dick was closer to the mark in “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”. The overpowering drive for self preservation is much more representative of the human condition, as are the search for the answers, “Who am I? Where Do I Come From?” etc. Ishiguro’s characters addressed these questions with a limpness that registered falsely to me.
An audience will never consider an author’s greater questions if his characters’ psychology fails the verisimilitude test.
Have you seen the movie? I haven’t read the book (and won’t now due to the movie giving it all away) but I was curious if it kept fidelity to the book. It was a bit slow however the cinematography and themes were good.
I have not, and after the awful reviews it got, don’t plan to see it.