Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. A reflection on love, life and friendships with a slightly haunting ending.
Having watched the movie Never Let Me Go – and not that taken by it – I wondered if the novel was more desirable to read, that the novel was probably not that straightforward to translate in to a novel. Originally published in 2005 by Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro it has established itself as a classic, being shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and winning the 2005 Arthur C. Clarke Award.
The bulk of the story is about human relationships that are forged over time and exist largely in their own world. That is where the science fiction underpins it. The latter is indirect in its influence with the novel very much based in the nineties. There are undoubtedly themes around mortality and humanity, albeit without the depth.
Delivered in first person account by Kathy the novel rarely lurches into jeapardy. A significant part of the story is based in Hailsham school which has a deceptive appearance of being an ordinary boarding establishment. There is only a fleeting sense of what is to become when a teacher is dispensed with for giving a little too much away about their destiny.
As the young people then leave school and stay in a cottage their curiosity about ‘possibles’ – humans who they may be cloned from – is never really answered but asks questions about their mortality.
We follow Kathy H through the Hailsham school, to the cottage where she becomes a carer and caring for her fellow students who donate their organs. I didn’t slip into any heartbreaking moments that the underlying tragedy of the cloning alludes to. Maybe because the plot never quite confronts it. The slow revelation of the characters’ destinies creates an atmosphere of tension and inevitability that keeps readers engaged but never quite reaches a climax.
Ishiguro draws his characters with such ease and sense of feeling but the middle class molly-coddling diminishes the empathy for them. The prose is Ishiguro’s strength with losing yourself in the characters. But its slow pace and gradual unfolding of the plot certainly tested my patience.
The eeriness of the story is how much the characters have always lived and accepted their fate without question. I found this questionable and would have expected one of them to challenge their destiny. It would have benefited from a philosophical examination of the ethics of cloning. And what is also missing is the world outside. Whilst the clones visit towns and cafes but there is no interaction from humans, no response, no judgement.
With a key theme being the value of life, this is explored through relationships – Ishiguro is undeniably superlative at catching that intrinsic detail of intimate safe friendships. However, the natural style through the characters speech has a mundane feel to it, as they dwell on the minor detail, and there is a lot of minor detail. Ishiguro’s characters are richly drawn and relatable. But there is no jeapardy.
That sense of tension as Kathy’s stories of Tommy and Ruth unfold did not grip me as much as it perhaps should have – the slowness, over-detailing of individual friendships undermined somewhat the real dystopia they lived in.
The novel ends on a crescendo with a visit to the teachers who ran the Hailsham school. The strange side effect of this is that the plot centres around a school for the clones that the teachers run as a safe positive environment. Yet this is told as an exception to the rule and that most of the clone schools were neglected and badly run. So a comfortable story could have been a more risky, less clear cut story?
As an exploration of the moral complexities of scientific progress it was lacking for me. As a reflection on love, life and friendships it is heartwarming with a slightly haunting ending.
