Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Fiction

            As a child, all Kathy H. knows is Hailsham, the boarding school where she grows up with the same people, all of whom are also students or teachers. Hailsham keeps Kathy in a bubble by physically isolating her from the outside world, but Kathy is also kept in an information bubble, oblivious to the role that she and her peers play as donors. Ishiguro paints an alternate universe of England during the 1990s, where children like Kathy and those at Hailsham are created to be a source of organs for others.  As Kathy grows up and begins to explore the outside world, she keeps on revisiting her memories at Hailsham. As Kathy gets older and the prospect of her time as a donor draws near, the more she thinks of Hailsham and the more she wishes that Hailsham will never let her go.

Ishiguro’s writing is evocative and his novel beautifully and brilliantly traverses so many different issues. Never Let Me Go is a coming-of-age novel, a love story, a cautionary tale, and a social critique.  The novel provokes difficult questions -- whether ignorance is bliss, how to create an identity when a life path has been pre-established, and whether there can ever be true autonomy in a world that is eerily similar to ours.  It was one of the best novels I’ve read all year – maybe ever – and I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.