Name: Never let me go
Rating: 3.855210819411297 (1257 reviews)
ISBN: 0786278374

Kazuo Ishiguro

Never let me go

Emiley Jones

Denisse Garcia Ramírez 

Most importantly, we demonstrated to the world that if students were reared in humane, cultivated environments, it was possible for them to grow to be as sensitive and intelligent as any ordinary human being.

Stavros Kosmas

So you're waiting, even if you don't quite know it, waiting for the moment when you realise that you really are different to them; that there are people out there, like Madame, who don't hate you or wish you any harm, but who nevertheless shudder at the very thought of you - of how you were brought into this world and why - and who dread the idea of your hand brushing against theirs. The first time you glimpse yourself through the eyes of a person like that, it's a cold moment. It's like walking past a mirror you've walked past every day of your life, and suddenly it shows you something else, something troubling and strange. 

I think of my pile of old paperbacks, their pages gone wobbly, like they'd once belonged to the sea. 

It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you've made, and there's this panic because you don't know yet the scale of disaster you've left yourself open to

Anushree Taparia

that there are people out there, like Madame, who dominate our lives. don't hate you or wish you any harm, but who nevertheless shudder at the very thought of you - of how you were brought into this world and why - and who dread the idea of your hand brushing against theirs. The first time you glimpse yourself through the eyes of a person like that, is a cold moment. It's like walking past a mirror you've walked past every day of your life, and suddenly it shows you something else, something troubling and strange.

Jillian Roberts

“I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water trying to hold onto each other. Holding on as hard as they can. But in the end, it’s just too much. The current is too strong. They’ve got to let go; drift apart. That’s how I think it is with us.”

Helen 

Because maybe, in a way, we didn't leave it behind nearva much as we might once have thought. Because somewhe underneath, a part of us stayed like that: fearful of the wotla around us, and - no matter how much we despised our selves for it - unable quite to let each other go.

nica

“when we lost something precious, and we’d looked and looked and still couldn’t find it, then we didn’t have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day, when we were grown up, and we were free to travel around the country, we could always go and find it again in Norfolk.”

Of course, the moment she was giving it to me, I didn’t know what sort of music it was, but I did know it wasn’t anything like Judy Bridgewater. Then again, almost immediately, I saw how Ruth wasn’t to know that—how to Ruth, who didn’t know the first thing about music, this tape might easily make up for the one I’d lost. And suddenly I felt the disappointment ebbing away and being replaced by a real happiness. We didn’t do things like hug each other much at Hailsham. But I squeezed one of her hands in both mine when I thanked her. She said: “I found it at the last Sale. I just thought it’s the sort of thing you’d like.” And I said that, yes, it was exactly the sort of thing.

“I think of my pile of old paperbacks, their pages gone wobbly, like they’d once belonged to the sea. I think about how I read them, lying on my front in the grass on warm afternoons, my hair—which I was growing long then—always falling across my vision.”

“It might be just some trend that came and went,” I said. “But for us, it’s our life.”

Jiya

Has Keffers recruited you for his porn patrol? 

Paola Fernandes

Comovente e real, mesmo em uma realidade utópica. 

Um ótimo livro para quem gosta de explorar um mundo diferente com assuntos do nosso cotidiano. Exploramos no livro a esperança, os sonhos, o amadurecimento e o amor em um mundo onde as escolhas não podem ser tomadas, já que o caminho já foi traçado. 

É muito comovente a forma que o livro flui fazendo o leitor caminhar juntamente com os personagens até o clímax onde entendemos o objetivo da existência de cada personagem, depois de se apegarmos. Sinto que o livro tem uma repartição como um muro do: antes da descoberta e o pós – passamos a sentir as perdas e a mesma esperança que existia durante todo o livro, passa a ser nossa, como se assim como cada um dos personagens, tivessemos a expecativa de que no final, realmente fosse funcionar. 

smile??

[...] maybe, in a way, we didn't leave it behind nearly as much as we might once have thought. Because somewhere underneath, a part of us stayed like that: fearful of the world around us, and — no matter how much we despised ourselves for it — unable quite to let each other go.

In those early months, we'd somehow developed this idea that how well you were settling in at the Cottages — how well you were 

 — was somehow reflected by how many books you'd read.

Our models were an irrelevance, a technical necessity for bringing us into the world, nothing more than that. It was up to each of us to make of our lives what we could.

You're no fool, and you can see that maybe me and Tommy, we might not be a couple forever. That's no tragedy. We were right for each other once. Whether we always will be, that's anyone's guess.

Even the solitude, I've actually grown to quite like. That's not to say I'm not looking forward to a bit more companionship come the end of the year when I'm finished with all of this. But I do like the feeling of getting into my little car, knowing for the next couple of hours I'll have only the roads, the big grey sky and my daydreams for company.

*Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel Klara and the Sun is now available to preorder* One of the most acclaimed novels of the 21st Century, from the Nobel Prize-winning author Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, Never Let Me Go dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life. 'Exquisite.' Guardian 'A feat of imaginative sympathy.' New York Times What readers are saying: 'A book I will return to again and again, and one that keeps me thinking even after finishing it. 5/5 stars' 'I loved it, every single word of it.' 'It took me wholly by surprise.' 'Utterly beautiful.' 'Essentially perfect.'

Never Let Me Go

Completely devastating to read, but I couldn’t put it down. Seriously such a good read.

Jess

A reunion with two childhood friends draws Kathy and her companions on a nostalgic odyssey into their lives at Hailsham, an isolated private school in the English countryside, and a confrontation with the truth about their childhoods.

ikkychan

Just finished reading “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro. Well, to be honest, I’ve finished reading it couple of months ago, but the heaviness of the book’s subject forced me to leave the thought of writing something about it to mature for a week or two, therefore, I wait until the right number of soju shot has brought me to the right level of insouciance, and actually hit the keyboard. Around 2012, I watched a movie by the same title mostly because it starred Carey Mulligan. I didn’t know it was based on this book at that time, I just went and wondered why everyone looks so damn sad all the time. I am ashamed of the lack of perception I have, like I’m not even sensitive enough to read the room, so I go ahead and watch it for the second time. I’m glad that I at least tried to notice the subtle messages in the movie since it essentially prep me for the relentless feeling of loss I’m experiencing after I read the book, like my whole body right now is just a mere hollow husk and all of the thing that made me were sucked out into the black hole of despair and despondency. The book started with a grown up Kathy, driving down in her old car to some faraway destination, to fulfill some vague task about being a ‘carer’ who counsels some ‘donor’. At this point we’re pretty much clueless about what the setting or the context of the story is, but Ishiguro has the passion for subtlety and elusiveness – like a bland but addictive way of retelling things – that we settle down quiet easily while Kathy laying us the groundwork of the surrounding world. With her delicate narration, she went back in time as she viewed the story in retrospect, digging up old memories of the beginning of the relationship she had with her two dearest friends, Ruth and Tommy, as it started in Hailsham where the three of them first met as kids. Hailsham itself is a kind of boarding school, but it’s far from the type that we usually have. The children study just as much as normal students do – under the guidance of ‘Guardians’ who act as their parental figures there – and they also interact in ordinary social interactions like any other middle schooler. But the minute they talk about the future, like the kind of things they want to be when they grow up, the atmosphere turns sort of tense and awkward. You see, yesterday afternoon, Miss Lucy, one of the Guardians, interrupted their daydreaming and said “...your lives are set out for you. You'll become adults, then before you're old, before you're even middle-aged, you'll start to donate your vital organs. That's what each of you was created to do''. At that time, no one really understood the significance of her words, or what caused her outburst, but it sets a foreboding sense of doom that can’t be quite erased and haunts them as each learns the ugly truth of their carefully, meticulously planned mass extermination. There are several things I keep on mulling over even long after I closed the last page of the book; the first thing is the relationship between Kathy and Ruth. Kathy is a restrained and careful observant; she is often a bystander and prefers to keep a keen eye over those around her without stepping into the spotlight. Her shyness and self-consciousness makes her unpopular and she remains on the sidelines of social activities, and therefore, quite easy to forget; but it also allows her to perceive things in great detail and notice subtle aspects of her surroundings. On top of that, she is extremely reticent about her personal affairs and only shares her thoughts to those she is closest to the most, like Tommy and Ruth. Ruth, quite contrary to Kathy, is outspoken, fiery and often stands out in the crowd. She is a typical queen bee who has the knack of upholding a reputation as someone with privileged rights and ensuring reliability in a society full of anxiety and uneasiness, thus naturally holding the reins in the social circle. From her early days, she often initiated make-believe games that oftentimes underlay her hidden agenda of making herself out to be more special than others; like the invention of Miss Geraldine’s ‘Secret Guard’ where she and several others guard their favorite Guardian from imaginary threats. Kathy, who is able to catch the whiff of the inauthenticity in Ruth’s behavior, often confronts Ruth and no matter how roundabout or subtle she did it, it still causes strain in their relationship, because one of the things Ruth hates the most is someone calling her bluff. Funnily enough, the way they fight surprisingly shows how similar their personalities are. Both of them confront each other in an indirect way and make up just as vaguely. After their dispute over the true origin of Ruth’s pencil case, Kathy expresses her intention to make amends by subtly ensuring Miss Geraldine’s benevolence for Ruth to fellow students. Accepting Kathy’s wish for reconciliation, Ruth returns the favor by helping her when she lost her ‘Never Let Me Go’ cassette. At first glance you probably thought that Ruth exists only as this sort of Kathy-hater whose sole existence is to ruin every chance Kathy has of having a happy relationship with Tommy. However, she is not a one-dimensional antagonist who is bad just for the sake of being bad; she has layers. She becomes a far more interesting character once you noticed that most likely, the source of her attention-whoring, pick-me-girl, control freak personality stems from her uneasiness and her fear of unknown future that she has to develop this strong, special, reliable persona precisely because she has no control whatsoever over the course of her short life and deep down she knows she will end up just like everyone else - donating her organ and die while doing so. By placing herself between Tommy and Kathy, who have undeniable attraction toward each other but refusing to confirm it in any way (like, there’s something called verbal communication, man, and imagine how frustrating it is for us bystander who have only table to flip at every chance of their restrained intimate interaction, like GOD, just kiss already), Ruth manage to have the upper hand over their relationship and thus having control over the narrative of their life. This portrayal of a deep and intimate yet toxic relationship between two females is true to life. Their polar opposite personalities are a hindrance to their bond and damper their friendship that it’s sometimes hard for them to see things eye to eye. Kathy holds dear to the memory of Hailsham while Ruth is more than eager to leave them behind; Kathy is inquisitive and tries to figure things out as she believes there’s more than meets the eye while Ruth tends to dream up scenarios and find solace in her own fabricated reality. But that doesn’t mean they don’t treasure each other’s company; quite contrary, both of them deeply care about each other that every contradiction that they have vex them so. Especially at the last confrontation that they had, a particularly ugly one, causing a huge rift and left them estranged for quite some time. Burdened by the guilt, Ruth develops into a bitter and harsh person while Kathy becomes even more reserved, more guarded of her emotions. She continues to mute her feelings, even to Tommy, when they finally meet in an awkward reunion along with Ruth. Nevertheless, Ruth managed to show her sincere hope to atone her sins of keeping Kathy apart from Tommy for all those years by giving Madame’s address before her eventual demise. The other thing I noticed is how every aspect of their life is made of imitations, down to the reason of their existence. Their former institution, Hailsham, is a mimicry of real boarding school, with the Guardian acting as teachers and at the same time the closest thing they have to a parental figure. Regrettably, the Guardians only put on a facade of reliable and caring adults, as in actuality they didn’t even see the students as human, they harbor a feeling of fearfulness toward them and regard them with apprehension. Entering the part of their life in the Cottages, Ruth mimics the way the seniors part with their partners, as they themselves impersonate it from the soap opera they saw on TV. She imitates the gesture in hope of displaying love and affection towards her designated partner, but alas, it’s also a mere facade as she doesn’t have any real feeling toward Tommy. In a similar way, Ruth also constructs her dream of a career-driven future based on an office furniture advertisement she had seen before. By that age they start to accept the fact that they are cloned from real people, which makes them more eager to find their ‘possible’, either as a way to live vicariously through them or to confirm their lingering idea that the whole thing is a sham. That is why they become even more embarrassed when they found out that the person whom they’ve been following is not Ruth’s ‘possible’ and thus served as another reminder of their pitiful existence. This theme of copying is also apparent in Tommy’s drawing where he created these copies of real animals but added a surreal quality in them, like enlarged ears or elongated legs, creating a whole unique, fantastical creature but still bears similarities to real-life beings. Tommy’s drawing also brought me to the final, heaviest theme I’ve read in the book, which is the way each individual fought with their internal, existential dread and the frustration of being hopelessly powerless against the inevitable doom. Prior to the meeting with Madame, Tommy is still willing to show his drawings to Kathy with a sense of pride and joyfulness, as he still bears wishful thinking that his craft could be put to Madame’s Gallery and gain them a deferral from donor duty, allowing them to grow old together. This faith, which arises from a baseless rumor they heard from Chrissie and Rodney - a couple they make acquaintances with in Cottages - stems from an individual’s struggle to find a right to live that was commonly shared and perpetuated from generation to generation of clones who subtly but surely refuse the kind of life as an expendable spare compartment. Tommy hopes to show Madame through his drawings how he might be just a copy of a person but that doesn’t mean he lacks any originality. The fantastical and imaginary details of the animals reveal that he is just as special as a real person, showing his individuality and eventually, his humanity. The weight of the meaninglessness of their hefty effort comes crashing down at their feet, erasing all traces of fanciful scheming and they come to the point of losing all hope. It is especially heartbreaking how Tommy, who used to be so cheery and brightfully optimistic even in the face of death, starts to be deprived of his sense of self and grows detached emotionally and physically with Kathy, as if the numbered days that they have left does not matter anymore. This revelation also gets to Kathy, as she accepts the change in Tommy’s psyche with solemn resignation and busy herself with her carer assignments to distract her mind from the overwhelming despair she is engulfed in. Ironically, this profession of hers is also the product of the evil system, designed to ensure the endurance of the Donation Program, where “carer’s” sole purpose is to ease and comfort “donor” as they begin their donation to the very last ones. It made her out to be an unhappy survivor of some twisted, expiring world. A world whose expiration date she also enhances, as though she is not the one who dies (yet), she undeniably helps everyone else, some of those are her dearest friends, to die before her.

Marija

Blah... Nice idea. Reminded me of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5130.Island" title="Island by Aldous Huxley" rel="nofollow noopener">Island</a> but without fight :P Plot is soooo slow I almost fell asleep reading it. I hoped the end would be much better.

Designed to meet the requirements for students at GCSE and A level, this accessible educational edition offers the complete text of Never Let Me Go with a comprehensive study guide. Intended for individual study as well as class use, Geoff Barton's guide: - clearly introduces the context of the novel and its author; - examines in detail its themes, characters and structure; - looks at the novel in the author's own words, and at different critical receptions; - provides glossaries and test questions to prompt deeper thinking. In one of the most memorable novels of recent years, Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, Never Let Me Go hauntingly dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at a seemingly idyllic school, Hailsham, and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life.

With GCSE and A Level study guide

The book would be boring and then, after a few chapters, for just one chapter itd get mildly interesting. It made me want to learn all the secrets, but the explanations for the secrets were just bland and the character too felt bland. Not unthought out, just bland. Then, the narrator would go on massive tangents. They’d say, to understand this you must know this and to understand that you must know this and so on and so on. Then, there was much more info in these tangents then what they ever started with so it felt like a build up for nothing. I don’t get why they wouldn’t just say things linear than try to hang things above our heads. They’d also say “and everything was fine UNTIL Ruth and I met under the tree that day.” And they made it out like it was a big mystery, but then a few paragraphs later they’d just say what happened under three that day. I simply don’t understand why. 

Rachel

The book would be boring and then, after a few chapters, for just one chapter itd get mildly interesting. It made me want to learn all the secrets, but the explanations for the secrets were just bland and the character too felt bland. Not unthought out, just bland. Then, the narrator would go on massive tangents. They’d say, to understand this you must know this and to understand that you must know this and so on and so on. Then, there was much more info in these tangents then what they ever started with so it felt like a build up for nothing. I don’t get why they wouldn’t just say things linear than try to hang things above our heads. They’d also say “and everything was fine UNTIL Ruth and I met under the tree that day.” And they made it out like it was a big mystery, but then a few paragraphs later they’d just say what happened under three that day. I simply don’t understand why. (less) [edit]

the grief, the loss and worst of all the acceptance

charlowwe

'A clear frontrunner to be the year's most extraordinary novel . . . Not since The Remains of the Day has Ishiguro written about wasted lives with such finely gauged forlornness.' Peter Kemp, Sunday Times In one of the most acclaimed and strange novels of recent years, Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewered version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now 31, Never Let Me Go hauntingly dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School, and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life.

Nothing is more haunting than the acceptance of fate in her dystopian world rather than rebellion itself. When the system has desensitized you of the truth, you no longer have the desire to change your path because you do not know anything outside their system.

It makes you reflect on your own desire to rebel, you are already living in a dystopian world but have you really did anything that resembles rebellion?

Marry

Nothing is more haunting than the acceptance of fate in her dystopian world rather than rebellion itself. When the system has desensitized you of the truth, you no longer have the desire to change your path because you do not know anything outside their system.

It makes you reflect on your own desire to rebel, you are already living in a dystopian world but have you really did anything that resembles rebellion?

Greg Talbot

4/30/18 Science fiction is a fertile grounds for disquieting visions of our future, but few conceal the terror off the pages as effectively as Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go". Attentive reading is needed to pierce through the plaintive quality of the story, and the limited descriptive vocabulary of the characters. Much of the horror is sanitized behind education, healthcare, and the fragile imagery of peacefulness. In many ways it calls to mind the young adult book "The Giver", or maybe the musically cold and anxious piercing album "OK Computer" by sui generis avant garde band Radiohead. Re-reading the story this time, I found myself moved by the space where Ishiguro allows for characters to attempt to feel things. There are images of boats, fields, boundaries of trees, glass framed open-offices and art galleries that provoke feelings in Ruth, Tommy and Kathy. The feelings and the imagery are real even if they are without a language to identify and share their sense of alienation. In a haunting scene where Ruth encounters a version of herself, and reminds her of a path she can't travel done, Ishiguro captures a sense of depersonalization with remarkable fragility. "Never Let Me Go" is profoundly sad, deliberate and an uncomfortable read. It's the dystopia of a loss of meaning in a human being. The separation from the body and the spirit. A divide between our ethics and our potential. The machinations that prey upon Kathy and Ruth are cold, sterile, and potentially serving the greater good of a utilitarian goal of improving our species. Reading it this time, I marveled at Ishiguro's ability to sit with Kathy and Ruth in their life journeys. Giving authentic stories on how these kids attempt to become the adults, and reckoning with the truth about their genetic limitations. "Never Let me Go" succeeds as a a horror novel and as sci-fi, but it also has heart and humanity through the lens of Kathy's caregiving. For a book that relies on inaction it manages to raise a riveting and profoundly emotional story. --------------------------------- Review - 9/25/13, 4 out of 5 stars Not unlike McCaarthy's “The Road”, Ishiguro's focuses on a relationship of people in a perilous future. There are brutal machinations of their world and a troubling sense of a failed society. There are reveals, and they are devastating, but wisely they are filtered through the fragile and compassion voice of Kathy H. Ishiguro gives us an unblemished private world of Kathy, and her inability to understand the greater world she is living in. As a romance, it doesn't provide two sexual fueled souls of passion, or the playful seductive pair outwitting and ultimately swooning the other. But make no mistake, this is a romance. Kathy longs to be with Tommy, but he is too weak to go for Kathy, instead staying with the dominant and manipulative Ruth. The caring nature of Kathy is apparent to the reader, as she struggles with her mixed emotions in the love triangle, her reproductive urges she can't satisfy, and the existential reality she never can face. **Spoilers** Kathy, Tommy and Ruth are never independent, because they are breed to be organ donations. There's not outragage, they don't know anything better, and their fates have already been decided by a larger group that is unvoiced in this story. Ishiguro presents a disturbing reality, and social comment about our inability to treat each other with dignity. The “using” of others in the most basic and elemental ways brings to mind all sorts of issues: factory farming, drone strikes, eliminating the social safety net to help those less fortunate, and slave labor. What a beautiful and tragic novel to hang it all on.

Nadine MacDonald

The strongest recommendation of a dear friend, Andrew. Sometimes, someone’s favourite books are a window into who they are, and for that reason alone, I am glad to have read this book. His love for it has enhanced my experience even more. What can I say about this other than there is something so human and relatable about this story? Whether it be to people whose lives don't go quite as they'd originally hoped, or to experiencing the evolution and changing of friendships. The writing is beautiful. Wasn't as much of a fan of Klara and the Sun, but will read more of Kazuo Ishiguro. “My heart had done a little leap, because in a single stroke, with that little laugh of agreement, it felt as though [we] had come close together again after all the years”

Dani

3.5 stars. I get it, it’s a cool concept. The dilemma and the ethics of it all. I didn’t like the coldness of it all. Dystopian novels generally have this heartless feeling that i don’t enjoy. Didn’t feel the relationships between characters. Writing was very clinical. Entertaining, though. No bs.

My impression of this book changed like literally at the very latest chapter. 

Even through 80% reading progress of this book I'm still not quite get it what's all this about, what's this book talking about or telling us or who are they (or I just missed something idk).

I feel like everything scattered like a clue that we have to pick up one by one and make a connection and conclusion by ourself, a subtle hint, and implicit meaning here and there. Then everything finally make sense at the end, or kind of.

The book is quite triggered so many emotions on me, especially or specifically the last few chapter, when everything start to come to light and explained.

Although unfortunately it still quite falls flat on me, possibly because nothing big in particular happening, everything seems too blurry and I'm having a hard time have a grasp on it. No conclusive ending as well but it is a thoughtful read.

My impression of this book changed like literally at the very latest chapter. 

Even through 80% reading progress of this book I'm still not quite get it what's all this about, what's this book talking about or telling us or who are they (or I just missed something idk).

I feel like everything scattered like a clue that we have to pick up one by one and make a connection and conclusion by ourself, a subtle hint, and implicit meaning here and there. Then everything finally make sense at the end, or kind of.

The book is quite triggered so many emotions on me, especially or specifically the last few chapter, when everything start to come to light and explained.

Although unfortunately it still quite falls flat on me, possibly because nothing big in particular happening, everything seems too blurry and I'm having a hard time have a grasp on it. No conclusive ending as well but it is a thoughtful read.

Really pleasantly surprised by this one. For me, it really hit everything I was missing with Klara and the Sun and worked much better as a character and social exploration.

Sivani

Soory but i read Klara and the Sun earlier :’)

ceren koc

- strikes some very intimate chords in my heart... i always come back to this novel with my own memories and some trauma's i struggle to unpack

- one of ishiguro's most emotionally hard-hitting stories, but it's also very quiet in how it presents some of these horrors which i think is its greatest strength

- dear mr. ishiguro is a lover of humanity, or at least someone who never shuts up about us. this book is the culmination of all the questions he's been asking in big neon LED lights: what does it mean to be human? where is the line drawn? what defines the human experience? and (spoilers) can something that isn't human still possess a soul, or still experience love?

- also, no one talks about this but it has quite a lot to say about how different people perceive the idea of intercourse, love, intimacy, etc. i enjoyed reading about that a lot

- the ishiguro gateway drug

- strikes some very intimate chords in my heart... i always come back to this novel with my own memories and some trauma's i struggle to unpack

- one of ishiguro's most emotionally hard-hitting stories, but it's also very quiet in how it presents some of these horrors which i think is its greatest strength

- dear mr. ishiguro is a lover of humanity, or at least someone who never shuts up about us. this book is the culmination of all the questions he's been asking in big neon LED lights: what does it mean to be human? where is the line drawn? what defines the human experience? and (spoilers) can something that isn't human still possess a soul, or still experience love?

- also, no one talks about this but it has quite a lot to say about how different people perceive the idea of intercourse, love, intimacy, etc. i enjoyed reading about that a lot

Slow start with a quiet, uncertain ending that has no answers, but reflective.

Cassandra Tang

lauren

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans, comes an unforgettable edge-of-your-seat mystery that is at once heartbreakingly tender and morally courageous about what it means to be human. Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is. Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.

It’s a book that brings out many emotions- you never really know how to feel but there’s always something there 

Never let me go

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