Never Let Me Go

*spoiler alert *

You can’t go two steps without bumping into a devotee of this book. I understand everything the devotees say — that the book is a meditation on the slow burn of friendship and love and the steadfastness of humanity… yawn. I understand that it’s meant to be a demonstration of people’s ability to get used to any sort of situation if they think it’s inevitable, plodding on indefinitely. The book’s subject of cloning and organ donation is rendered very plausible and I think Ishiguro did a great job there, but while the story is being told through the central character’s (Kathy) tunnel-visioned, uninformed narration, I would have liked to know more about the social implications of this alternate reality.

The characters are quietly resigned to their fate as farmed organ donors (free range).

But isn’t that sad? I want to read books about people that fight, people that shout in the streets, not people that shrug their shoulders and sigh.

I think some people will say, though, that this is the reason why the book is so tragic, ‘the heartbreaking acceptance of a sad fate’ and all.

But, I think that that is exactly the kind of thinking that epitomizes the state of mind of so many people, myself included sometimes, which seems to me incredibly negative. To not leave any room for rebellion (a dirty word in today’s times), resistance or indeed any strong emotion? I think that is much more heartbreaking than a colourless submission. Fighting and losing is to me more tragic than accepting and losing. The only part of the book with any extreme feeling was when Ruth confesses to Kathy and Tommy that she had kept them apart for many years, and Kathy breaks down in tears, but then it’s all back to ‘…we didn’t talk about it much afterwards…’ Gah!

I understand though, that in the long run if your future is mapped out for you so exactly then why should you protest? It is better for you if you get used to the idea, but I just didn’t feel like their futures were that inevitable (even though they were taught to think that way almost from birth), I felt that it was just too unbelievable that nobody in the book had any seed of wanting things to be different.

Well, I guess in the end I feel cheated when I can’t care about the characters. Maybe it’s because by trying to make them so hyper-realistic, Ishiguro actually ends up with characters that are strangely unreal, oddly cold.

Have a read of the book, it is well written and you do want to finish it (for better or worse!), would love to know what people think of it…