Never Let Me Go BNever Let Me Go A

We do book reviews too now! Sweet!!! So there were two main thoughts that occurred to me while I was reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go:

  1. It really is unfair how nearly every review of this book had to give away the secret to the story (they’re clones!) – this unspeakably lame review from The Village Voice pretty much gives up the whole plot in its opening line. I understand that you can still enjoy the book once you’ve been tipped off and the fools in marketing needed a hook, but I still lament the fact that because I’d accidentally read a review when the book first came out I wasn’t able to have the discovery process all to myself.
  2. I wish I’d read The Remains of the Day first. I’m betting the narrators of both of these novels are pretty similar, and though Remains won the Booker prize I worry that if I go and read it now my experience with Never Let Me Go will ruin some of its freshness.

Overall, I admire Ishiguro for tackling such a sci-fi topic yet grounding it in a small, meticulous world. The voice of his female narrator (Kathy) is impressively authentic, though not being female I suppose I’m not fully qualified to judge. Ironically, that voice is why I both admired and felt distanced from the book – Kathy’s a well-drawn character, or at least her thoughts are; but those thoughts often seem cloying and small-minded, to the point where it’s hard to sympathize. Ruth (Kathy’s best friend and the other main female character in the book) is also drawn remarkably well, but demonstrates such selfish and manipulative qualities that again it’s hard to enjoy spending time with her.

What I enjoyed most was the simple yet quietly unnerving atmosphere the novel is set in. We realize we’re in a slightly parallel universe, with a few select sci-fi elements thrown in, but Ishiguro really does very little in the way of explaining how it all came to be – he uses that mystery and unsettling quality to craft a world where anything seems possible, yet the focus is always on his characters and how they’re immediately feeling.

Lastly, I thought I should just note that the paperback copy I read had the first cover shown above. When I’d finished the book and started reading reviews, though, I discovered that the original hardcover looked like the second picture, which I prefer a lot more – the doll-face on the paperback is certainly creepy, but I think the original does a better job of alluding to that entire creepy, isolated atmosphere.