Never Let Me Go

By: Kazuo Ishiguro

Narrated by: Rosalyn Landor

Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • From the acclaimed, bestselling author of The Remains of the Day comes “a Gothic tour de force" (The New York Times) with an extraordinary twist—a moving, suspenseful, beautifully atmospheric modern classic.

As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were.

Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.

©2005 Kazuo Ishiguro (P)2005 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

• National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee, 2005, Fiction
• Alex Award Winner, 2006

"Stunningly brilliant fiction....A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience." (Kirkus Reviews)

"Ishiguro's elegant prose and masterly ways with characterization make for a lovely tale of memory, self-understanding, and love." (Library Journal)

"So exquisitely observed that even the most workaday objects and interactions are infused with a luminous, humming otherworldliness.....Ishiguro spins a stinging cautionary tale of science outpacing ethics." (Publishers Weekly)

"So exquisitely observed that even the most workaday objects and interactions are infused with a luminous, humming otherworldliness. . . . An epic ethical horror story, told in devastatingly poignant miniature. . . . Ishiguro spins a stinging cautionary tale of science outpacing ethics." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Perfect pacing and infinite subtlety. . . . That this stunningly brilliant fiction echoes Caryl Churchill’s superb play A Number and Margaret Atwood’ s celebrated dystopian novels in no way diminishes its originality and power. A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Ishiguro’s provocative subject matter and taut, potent prose have earned him multiple literary decorations, including the French government’s Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and an Order of the British Empire for service to literature. . . . In this luminous offering, he nimbly navigates the landscape of emotion—the inevitable link between present and past and the fine line between compassion and cruelty, pleasure and pain." —Booklist

On the meaning of life

I ended up recommending this book to a colleague who teaches a philosophy class entitled "The Good Life." He plans on using it, saying it is the best novel that he has found so far.

Because that is what the book is about and that is why it seems slow to some people. It is not action packed. The novel will not go places that you would expect a movie to go -- revolution, loud cries for justice. Though the characters seem to be very different from us, they are not. Their lives are just compressed. In their childhoods they understand and don't understand what their lives will be. They have opportunity to have all the things that philosophers says makes life worth living: friends, love, study, work, everything except children.

The book makes us ask, if this is all there is, is life worth living?

Not a children's book

I thought this was a lovely listen. Great narrator and the story is beautifully written. As others have commented, the story is not a mystery, and isn't written as such. Haunting.

Food for thought

This novel is well-written and well-read, and as other reviewers have pointed out, it makes you think.

The only difficulty I had was that I found it difficult to suspend disbelief and accept this alternate world. This is possibly because it's in the "Contemporary" category rather than Science Fiction where I think it ultimately belongs, but more, I couldn't square the real science and controversy behind this subject with the alternate reality. One only has to look at the political dust-up over mere stem cell research to see how ultimately unrealistic this story is in this setting; in this time period.

But that is my only criticism.

It is a good, solid story.

Fantastic

I didn't want the story to end. The characters haunted me weeks later. I have listened to it several times. I recommended to my book club and many thought it was the best read of the year. Eerie and heartbreaking.

Well written but a little pointless

Good characters playing out an answer to a question I was not asking. Whether a political response to an issue that I don't care about it an Everyman tale, it just missed for me.

Very well read.

Our Selves, Our Society, Our Science

Caution: This review reveals nothing that would spoil your relish at discovering this book.

At the intersection of science, society and identity, lives can only be seen as through a frosted window alternately revealing glimpses of light, hazy figures and, finally, a frightening opacity. Few of us, or our favorite writers, can see the dangers and the possibilities at this intersection. Kazuo Ishiguro can and shares his view with simplicity and grace.

Hailshum, a school for special children, reveals its nature and purpose slowly and always through the eyes of several of its don...uh...students. Cathy, Ruth, and Tommy are friends of a sort who, like all friends, play and fight and spar and love with each other in their years at Hailshum and later. Ishiguro shows them to us with all their charms, their weaknesses and their ugly parts. In this, he shows us their deep, confused, scarred humanness; he shows us the humanness they share with us.

Cathy, Ruth and Tommy live at that intersection, the intersection of science, society and identity, living with bumpy stoicism the lives science prepared them for. Society has decided it needs them, it seems, and they need each other to find meaning and love in their neglected circumstances. They, like we in ours, find some.

Ishiguro tells us their tragic and ordinary story with the gentleness that distinguishes his work. Let no one tell you otherwise; this book is masterful.

R3W

Thought provoking

This book was very thought provoking in what could actually happen in a government that was only concerned about a superior race like nazi Germany's. At sometimes it brought chills to me knowing what I thought was going to occur. The speaking of donors an carers and when one completes with insinuations that donors are kept alive until the organ is given up is very scary.

A Strange Journey

I have been curious about this book for years. I'm glad I finally read it.

Not science fiction, but social science fiction

I'll try not to reveal too much. This story centers on a group of adolescents and young adults conceived and raised separately to provide a "benefit" to modern English society at large. They live at a separate boarding school whose purpose is to cultivate them and protect them for this function. Ishiguro creates a world that is for the most part quite believable. It includes the daily activities, inner thoughts, dreams, and tragedies of these young people, as well as some of the conflicts felt by their guardians. From some of the other reviews, I guess this novel is not for everyone. I found it engaging, thought-provoking, suspenseful, and compassionate. The questions raised for me by this story are "What if a modern society conspired to use people this way? What is the value of a human soul?" Uncomfortable to think about...but fascinating at the same time.

So sad

People can take so much from us. A story about people who are cloned and then the clones become organ donorsj. The donors are never allowed to marry or have children even though they are just as alice as anyone else.
I recommend this book.
It's such a tragic story. One day it could become a reality .