Never Let Me Go
Book - 2005
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Opinion
From Library Staff
From Library Staff
One of the most devastating, deeply emotional and soulful novels I have ever read - cutthroat and beautiful. This book asks questions of you, lingers with you.
One of the most devastating, deeply emotional and soulful novels I have ever read - cutthroat and beautiful. This book asks questions of you, lingers with you.
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Add a QuoteThen he said: "I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart. That's how I think it is with us. It's a shame, Kath, because we've loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can't stay together forever."
“Because maybe, in a way, we didn't leave it behind nearly as much as we might once have thought. Because somewhere underneath, a part of us stayed like that: fearful of the world around us, and no matter how much we despised ourselves for it--unable quite to let each other go.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
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Add a CommentThis didn't gut me the way the movie did, Andrew Garfield did wonderful things with Tommy. But the book allowed me to see how sinister the story was in an entirely different way. All this knowing and not knowing had me bouncing back and forth between Plato's allegory of the cave and my experiences at Catholic school. Making up rules and never interrogating why they exist or in the students' case if the adults really enforce them in the first place.
This is only the second of his books that I have read but they seem to echo a particular style. You are taken on a journey by the protagonist through memories. When you reach the end, the story seems to linger with you - hauntingly.
This is a tiresome strip-tease for the first three-quarters of the book. The characters as depicted are too strange to warm up to. By the time the author finally filled in details and revealed the full nature of the lives of the characters, this reader was mostly just relieved that the book was coming to an end. The accolades that this novel received must have been due to the shocking idea behind it rather than the quality of the story craft.
Modern Mrs Darcy
Never let me go is a very tragic but touching book. In the story there are three friends Kathy, Tommy and Ruth who are raised in a boarding school for future donors. The book fast forwards to when Kathy is now grown up and a carer for people like her who are clones and need to start donating. Throughout the story the friends go through some major ups and downs while living their life in their boarding school, Hailsham. The book is full of friendships, sadness and important lessons and is a great book for high schoolers to read.
Like everything I've read of Ishiguro's, this one has stayed with me years after I first read it. Heartbreaking, utterly believable and yet so imaginative.
Don't recommend - futuristic book
A thoughtful reflection on what it means to be human, the importance of relationships, and the small ways we find meaning in life, painted across an unsuspecting, darker landscape reminiscent of our own fates...
Never Let Me Go tugs at your heart. You know the inevitable fate of Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy. But you keep expecting that a miracle would happen. That they deserve a chance at a life better than the one planned for them.
by author of Remains of the Day