Summary: A first person narrative of growing up in a boarding school and moving into adulthood under the cloud of, sort of, knowing their fate.
I continue to have mixed feelings about Kazuo Ishiguro. I really like Remains of the Day and re-reading again recently made me want to pick up another of Ishiguro’s books. I have previously finished When We Were Orphans and I gave up on The Buried Giant.
Part of the issue I think is that Ishiguro very much uses unreliable narrators and understatement in his writing. While unreliable narrators works in Remains of the Day, it tends to make the reader not like the unreliable narrator. And I think that the understatement, at least today, tends to go over the head of people who are not fairly sophisticated readers.
I have not previously read this book or watched the movie. (I didn’t know there was a movie until after I finished the book.) But I was had figured out what was going on pretty early on in the narrative. The understatement of the horror of the concept and the orientation of the narrative to focus on the daily struggles of teens in a boarding school and transitioning to adulthood means that I am pretty sure many readers missed the horror. That stylistic choice, which I appreciate from an artistic perspective, clearly went over people’s heads, at least if I take the Goodreads reviews as exemplary of the general reading public.
I didn’t struggle to read Never Let Me Go like I did When We Were Orphans. I was engaged and kept reading it straight through. Ishiguro left me enough bread crumbs to know what was going on. But I also didn’t think the book rose to the level of Remains of the Day.
The story is told by Kath. She is an adult looking back at her growing up years and trying to understand her role. She is trying to justify her own choices and understand the choices of others. It is this self justification that really brings in the unreliable narrator. And because Kath is not sure of her own narrative recollection, the reader can’t be sure.
I think Tommy, Kath’s friend and a boy early in their lives who was bullied at the boarding school, was the hero of the story. But it is clear from very early on that Kath had a crush on him and even though she was frustrated with him for not being more popular and getting along with everyone, that seems to be more about Kath wanting the boy she liked to be popular, not that he was deficient. The narrative clearly suggests that he “knows” more than others and that is part of the reason that he was unpopular. He was unwilling to just go with the flow.
This is a book primarily about teens, but it is not a young adult novel. It can be read by young adults, but the perspective is a reflection on being young by someone who is no longer young. There is discussion of sex and the confusion about sex and desire, but there isn’t anythings particularly graphic. The “adultness” of the novel is the theme.
Never Let Me Go: A Novel by Kazuo Ishiguro Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook