Kazuo Ishiguro

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.

Never Let Me Go

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.

You said it was because your art would reveal what you were like. What you were like inside. That’s what you said wasn’t it? Well, you weren’t far wrong about that. We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.

Emiley Jones

*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.'

Claudiu

Never Let Me Go is a beautiful and haunting novel about love, loss, and the meaning of life. The story follows Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy, three clones who are raised in an isolated boarding school. As they grow older, they begin to realize that they are not ordinary people, and that they have a special purpose in life.

The novel is written in a lyrical and understated style, and Ishiguro's prose is simply stunning. The characters are complex and well-developed, and the reader is drawn into their lives and their struggles. The themes of the novel are universal, and it is sure to resonate with readers of all ages.

I highly recommend Never Let Me Go to anyone who is looking for a thought-provoking and moving read. It is a book that will stay with you long after you finish reading it.

[Disclaimer: I am not very good at writing reviews so I asked Bard, the Google AI, for help]

altlovesbooks

I’m not sure how I feel after reading this. I loved The Remains of the Day a ton, and I expected to like this one even more because of the added sci-fi layer to Ishiguro’s writing. Instead, I feel a little cheated and let down; while the writing and story were certainly very good, it just didn’t hit the same way for me as The Remains of the Day did. 

Briefly (as there’s many other much longer reviews here to peruse for detailed plot points), the story is written from two points: Kathy later in life as a “carer”, and Kathy early in life as a student at Hailsham boarding school. From the beginning hints are dropped from both points in time that something off-kilter is going on with the kids at Hailsham, and whatever that something is followed these students even after they left the school. We follow Kathy as she reminisces about her time at Hailsham and after, about the relationships she developed primarily between Tommy, Ruth, and herself, and how they developed and changed over the years, shadowed the entire way by the “something” hanging over them all. 

I liked the first third of the book the best, when the kids were still at Hailsham and it felt like a reader-driven detective story in figuring out what all the hints dropped by the author meant. It honestly didn’t take much, there’s enough dropped to basically put the puzzle together fairly quickly, but I was led along the way in how the characters would react when they figured it out, and what would happen as a result. This was where I was primarily let down, and was also one of my biggest annoyances about the book: none of the players in this story felt like they had emotions at all about what they were revealing along the way. No curiosity, no “huh, that’s weird”, no real drive to learn more. Mild ending feeling spoilers (no details): (view spoiler)[even when the author finally gets around to “the big reveal” far later in the book than felt necessary, the characters accepted it, talked about it briefly, and then the book ends. It felt incredibly anticlimactic (hide spoiler)]. 

It’s a fine book and I can see why people rated it how they did, but ultimately it felt like a miss to me. Certainly interesting discussion questions are raised, but there’s so much detachment felt by the main characters that it’s hard for me as a reader to really get invested in questions that won’t be answered or addressed.

Derek

A moving tale which explores the innocence of youth, mortality, loss, and what it means to be human. A bit of a long burn, but worth the heat. 

Brandon

'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.

I think i love this story more and more each time i read it. Ishiguro is such a skilled writer

Karis Ryu

Hauntingly beautiful, deeply unsettling, and horrifying in what the matter-of-fact presentation of Ishiguro's world convinces you is normal. It's a world that slowly and unnoticeably builds around you until you realize, too late, that something presented to you isn't quite right. Your understanding of humanity is questioned, in the best way.

I was very excited to read this book so in some ways I was let down. This is not an exciting read it’s slow and sad and it makes you think a lot. It wasn’t my favorite but definitely worth reading. 

khwaiish 

Where to begin—this book is such a beautiful, haunting story. This wasn’t the easiest read as it was quite slow at times, but it’s the kind of book you’ll never be the same after reading. 

Kathryn Larson

Emmm :p

It’s the kind of book that you’re not going to read in one night. But you think about the characters a lot and you care so deeply for Kathy and Tommy. completely defies the genre.

Dystopian prose fiction. I did read the whole thing and enjoyed it. However, I would have been confused had I not googled what the heck is going on in this society. Slow at times but definitely interesting.

Zoey Novak

Julian

Explores the expendability of human beings. I would recommend going into this book blind as there is a beauty of discovering the reality of the characters situation along with them. I cried twice.

MaiAbdelhamed

" when I watched you dancing that day , I saw something else, I saw a new world coming rapidly , more scientific, efficient, yes more cures for the old sickness. But a very harsh cruel world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world , one that she knew in her heart could not remain , and she was holding it and pleading never to let her go " 

I was confused while reading this novel . Did I liked it ? Yes I did. But somehow it still kept making me feel awkward . It's a sad story but full of happy memories . It's science fiction but the characters were real with semi- normal lives .Though , these differences what made the story unique and lovely.

was recommended this book by my brother. If you like dystopian novels, this is a good one. You might be a little confused at first what the main character is trying to tell you when she reflects on her time at Hailsham but it will all make sense towards the end. Couldn’t put it down once I got into it. 

Jasmin Bud

Tuago

I've tried again to read Kazuo Ishiguro, but it seems like it's not for me. I found it again (after Clara and the Sun) slow and utterly boring.

Brittany Levely-Connolly

I started reading this novel based on a suggestion someone had given me due to my love of speculative fiction and dystopian fiction. I started reading this novel without any real knowledge about what it was about, and let me be honest with you, I’m quite glad it happened that way. Kazuo that’s the readers on a trip down memory lane with Kathy, a carer who is about to transition to donor. And in doing forces the characters and reader themselves to ask “what it means to be human?” “How can we demonstrate we have a soul?” This is an emotional and heart wrenching read and for those looking for a happy ending - this isn’t for you. Kazuo doesn’t sugar coat their fate and life itself is not a fairy tale. Amazingly well written and love the hints and undertone of medical technology and progress but not until the end is it revealed why Kathy and her school mates are so different from the rest of the British population. Your heart can’t help but break for these characters and the world they live in.

Joana da Silva

I picked up this one in an effort of reading a physical book once since I've grown pretty attached to my Kobo. This was my first experience with Kazuo Ishiguro and I thoroughly enjoyed the author's writing. This book has a very dark setting from the beginning, you don't know what's wrong but you can sense it. It's so intense that, when you reach the main event, you're not surprised. Ruth was the most annoying character ever, I spent most of the book wanting to beat some sense into her.

Isadora Cal

I loved this book. I love the way the story is told. Kathy tells a story just like I do - so many parentheses and context to everything that it takes forever to tell what you actually intended to. I am still digesting it. I read it without knowing much about it, because I looked it up back when the movie came out, then forgot about it. So as the story unfolds I was getting a lot of surprises.

Alexa M

2.5/3 idk
i’m just really confused on why this is so hyped .. lol ... i found it a bit boring but was interested to see what all the underlying confusion lead to and once we found out i was like “okay and...” and kept waiting for something more to justify the hype but nope. not for me!!

Prashanth Srivatsa

A devastating book. There's a poignancy about the way the characters avoid talking about their fates, their hesitancy in growing up and a curiosity for the outside world. The gloom descends over their lives through subtle doubts and insurgencies, as the days of painting and discovering sex turn into one of resignation and awaiting death. Ishiguro evokes childhood memories beautifully using personal collections and innocent groupism, and never fails to make the reader fear for when they will know their purpose.

As a child, Kathy - now thirty-one years old - lived at Hailsham, a private school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe that they were special and that their well-being was crucial not only for themselves but for the society they would eventually enter. Kathy had long ago put this idyllic past behind her, but when two of her Hailsham friends come back into her life, she stops resisting the pull of memory. And so, as her friendship with Ruth is rekindled, and as the feelings that long ago fueled her adolescent crush on Tommy begin to deepen into love, Kathy recalls their years at Hailsham. She describes happy scenes of boys and girls growing up together, unperturbed - even comforted - by their isolation. But she describes other scenes as well - of discord and misunderstanding that hint at a dark secret behind Hailsham’s nurturing facade. With the dawning clarity of hindsight, the three friends are compelled to face the truth about their childhood - and about their lives now.

** spoiler alert **
           This review is just for me.

Ok, so I've been trying to reflect on this book a lot and why it really just didn't hit me like it hit everyone else and I think there's a few different reasons for this.

1. I went in expecting heavy sci-fi

I don't remember where I heard it but someone said this book was sci-fi and they didn't say much else. Everyone, even Ishiguro himself, says that the sci-fi isn't the point of the story. This definitely threw me off because the whole time reading it, I was mainly focusing on the sci-fi.

1. The concepts weren't anything new to me

I know this shouldn't have affected the way I felt about the book but the ideas brought up, the things that everyone says made them "incredibly uncomfortable", just weren't new ideas to me. I also just want to say that don't mean to sound like a hipster, I'm just trying to explain why this book wasn't monumental to me like it was to everyone else.

I think in my more recent life (mostly high school) I had become more of a pessimist and thought heavily about what exactly matters to people. The topic of people being inherently selfish (vs. selfless) was something I had thought a lot about for a long time. Albeit mostly subconsciously, I'd already toyed extensively with the question of how much someone would give up just to benefit themself. This is exactly why while almost everyone I had heard talk about this book described it as "nightmarish", I had never felt this way while (and even after) reading the book. 

The fact that the Hailsham clones were merely sacrifices for the non-clone "normals" wasn't anything revolutionary to me. I could very easily see this happening in the future. And while I understand the the art and institution that was Hailsham was supposed to illustrate how the clones were being treated as less than people simply because of what they are (a sort of metaphor for racism), I felt that the dismissal of the clones by the normals was quite natural. 

Now, when I say 'natural' I don't mean that their actions were right in any way. I think, consciously, most people would try to treat people such as the clones the same as everyone else. However, I feel that it is a part of the human condition to be inherently selfish. I really do believe that if given the option, the average unhealthy human that had no chance at living would choose to sacrifice a stranger to become healthy again. The poor treatment of the clones is all just dehumanization in order for the normals to justify and feel that they're doing nothing wrong and only doing what is natural and necessary (which I'm not going to go into because I'm kind of over writing at this point but you know my whole spiel about dehumanization from everything from Douglass and the Cave Allegory).

Very quickly I want to touch on the topic of how the students never tried to rebel against their eventual fate (becoming donors). I didn't feel that this was very revolutionary either. It was explained that the clones came to know of their fate very gradually, from when they were children and were incessantly praised for being special and important kids. I feel that since they were raised this way, to believe that what they were being raised for made them incredibly special and important, it isn't a stretch to think that the clones thought what they were doing was simply just—natural. (And I understand that this is what's supposed to be one of the tragedies of the book but, for me, it was explained in a way that I could understand why it turned out that way.)

I found this book to be entertaining for an entirely different, irrelevant reason. The main characters of the book were always quick to pick up on each other's cues and signals so watching them interact almost felt like a game. I say "the main characters" but it was mostly Kathy, the narrator, who was especially attuned to other's silent signals (leading to her becoming a great carer in the present day). To me, Kathy was an incredibly interesting character because of this coupled with the fact that she remains calm/stoic/I'm not sure how to describe it in almost any situation. What I mean by this is how even when one of her friends throws her under the bus or tarnishes her reputation in front of a group of people, Kathy remains calm and, most of the time, does not do/say anything to refute this in order to not start discourse. Obviously meaning that's she's non-confrontational but these two aspects of Kathy made her incredibly easy to relate to for me, personally. Maybe it's the time in which I read this, having more recently gotten out of a phase in my life when I very regularly dealt with situations like this and reacted in the exact same way, but like I said, this is what drew me to her.

This is all really unfortunate because I really wanted to like this book in the same way that everyone else does. I love a philosophical read but that just isn't what I got out of this. That being said, one of the major themes (love) just isn't something I can relate to at this point in my life. Or maybe I'm just too dumb to grasp the real meaning of this book. That's why I've watched and read a few analyses of it but even though I understand and agree with the things they say, the book still doesn't feel monumental to me in the same way it does to other people. So maybe it's just going completely over my head. I really don't know anymore. Regardless, I still gave it a good rating because I did find it to be an entertaining read. Though not for the same reasons as everyone else. Maybe if I reread this book later in life, I would be able to better understand and enjoy it in the same way.

This is a remarkable story of love, loss and hidden truths. A novel charged throughtout with a sense of the fragility of our lives. Kathy, Ruth and Tommy were pupils at Hailsham - situated deep in the English countryside. The children were tenderly sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe they were special and that their personal welfare was crucial. But for what reason were they really there?

Jamieson

you ever finish a book, slowly close it like you're in a trance. Hold it for a second, then stare up at the ceiling contemplating what the point of life even is anymore and why we're even bothering living because that is what I did after finishing this book. 
 
I was gonna review this and I started but it was a trash review that didn't convey MY FEELINGS so I'll try again tomorrow xoxo

This may be one of the saddest books I have read. What a horrible life to lead knowing you are not like the rest, knowing you will never experience or feel things like the rest. If this is the future of mankind and longevity and curing diseases, would it be all worth it? Would we be able to live with ourselves?

Jovana Gjekanovikj 

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 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.If you enjoyed Never Let Me Go, you might also like Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, now available in Faber Modern Classics.

Beatriz Aguiar

i loved this book.
for one it is dark academia and we follow the main character as she reminisces on her life. however, you don't know something very important about her life.
this is a deep, thought-provoking novel that's sooo compelling to read. it might be a bit disturbing in the end when you finally realise how this soft sci-fi novel is a metaphor for our own life.
dark academia at its best.

Kristen Claiborn

I had attempted to read this book once in 2018 and didn't finish. In 2021, I decided to pick it up again for a Popsugar Reading Challenge prompt (read a book you previously did not finish). I had also just recently discovered that Ishiguro received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017, so I felt like I should make another effort to read something of his. Plus it's been made into a movie and I like comparing print and non-print versions of the same work (former teacher thing). 
 The thing about this book is I was left with questions. So many questions. I appreciate that many people enjoy reading books where much of the story is left to interpretation, but I am not those people. Why couldn't he have made things more clear??? I used to think I was a relatively not-stupid person, but Ishiguro's book here made me feel pretty stupid. It took me most of this book to figure out those kids were organ farms. Then I sat and wondered why it took me so long. Then I wondered how much more I missed. 
 Then I went and read a Danielle Steele.

Never Let Me Go

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