I first read this novel as part of my A-Level English Literature course but have thought of it often since and the longer it sits, the more relevant it seems to become. Then, somewhere in the obscurity and academic debate of these questions, the protagonist, Kathy H, and others like her, find themselves caught and suspended in uncertainty. This difference is not at first obvious, but brings to light a burdening load of moral questions as it is revealed. Ishiguro deals with a world much like our own, but with one significant difference that changes our view of everything. Better examples of an author’s ability to create a sense of isolation and dread in a protagonist must be few and far between. It never hammered home what exactly it wanted to, perhaps it was about fate, maybe about the willful aversion to truth in order to live more a comfortable life in any regard- it fails to be compelling.Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is a powerful novel about identity and belonging, the struggle to find a place in a bleak and hostile society and, underneath all of the turmoil, the things which offer us the brightest hope.
Thematically this book was boring as well. The whole book is building up a romance that only sees the light of day in the last 30 pages, which is so completely passionless and lackluster. The first half of the book is spent in this shroud of mystery that never has a curtain pull, instead it just sort of evaporates and feels incredibly anticlimactic. Are we meant to believe every single one of the characters just accepts their God awful fate? I couldn't believe we didn't hear about an ounce of dissention in the novel. Even the adults who were normal felt unbearably flat and cliche. Additionally, every single character seemed to be irredeemably gullible and naive. Kathy didn't have much initiative throughout the story, she was such a passive narrator. The main characters felt completely flat to me, and they never seemed to grow from there 'highschool' cliquey-ness. I read "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro because he just won the Nobel, and this is one of his more renowned works.
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