S.J. Parris
S.J. Parris writes about her inspiration for Heresy, which masterfully blends true events with fiction into a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
Adam Haslett
A conversation with Adam Haslett, author of Union Atlantic, a deeply affecting portrait of the modern gilded age, the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Never Let Me Go: Summary and book reviews of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, plus links to an excerpt from Never Let Me Go and a biography of Kazuo Ishiguro.
Never Let Me Go
by
Kazuo Ishiguro
Hardcover: Apr 2005,
320 pages.
Paperback: Mar 2006,
304 pages.
From the acclaimed author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were
Orphans, a moving new novel that subtly re-imagines our world and time in a
haunting story of friendship and love.
As a child, Kathy–now thirty-one years old–lived at Hailsham, a private
school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered
from the outside world, brought up to believe that they were special and that
their well-being was crucial not only for themselves but for the society they
would eventually enter. Kathy had long ago put this idyllic past behind her,
but when two of her Hailsham friends come back into her life, she stops
resisting the pull of memory.
And so, as her friendship with Ruth is rekindled, and as the feelings that
long ago fueled her adolescent crush on Tommy begin to deepen into love, Kathy
recalls their years at Hailsham. She describes happy scenes of boys and girls
growing up together, unperturbed–even comforted–by their isolation. But she
describes other scenes as well: of discord and misunderstanding that hint at a
dark secret behind Hailsham's nurturing facade. With the dawning clarity of
hindsight, the three friends are compelled to face the truth about their
childhood–and about their lives now.
A tale of deceptive simplicity, Never Let Me Go slowly reveals an
extraordinary emotional depth and resonance–and takes its place among Kazuo
Ishiguro's finest work.
Book Reviews
Booklist - Allison Block
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.
Library Journal - Henry L. Carrigan (starred review)
Ishiguro's elegant prose and masterly ways with characterization make for a lovely tale of memory, self-understanding, and love.
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
With perfect pacing and infinite subtlety, Ishiguro reveals exactly as much as we need to know about how efforts to regulate the future through genetic engineering create, control, then emotionlessly destroy very real, very human lives-without ever showing us the faces of the culpable, who have "tried to convince themselves. . . . That you were less than human, so it didn't matter." ... A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
So exquisitely observed that even the most workaday objects and interactions are infused with a luminous, humming otherworldliness. The dystopian story it tells, meanwhile, gives it a different kind of electric charge. . . . An epic ethical horror story, told in devastatingly poignant miniature. . . . Ishiguro spins a stinging cautionary tale of science outpacing ethics.
The Independent (UK) - Geoff Dyer
The problem for the reviewer, appropriately enough, is that by revealing more of what the book is about he risks going too far and unravelling its meticulously woven fabric of hints and guesses. So I'll leave it there. Suffice it to say that this very weird book is as intricate, subtly unsettling and moving as any Ishiguro has written.
The Sunday Times (UK) - Peter Kemp
Not since The Remains of the Day has Ishiguro
written about wasted lives with such finely gauged forlornness. That he
contrives to do so in a narrative crawling with creepy frissons is remarkable.
Not the least out-of-the-ordinary feature of this novel, with its piercing
questions about humanity and humaneness, is the way it affectingly moves past
gothic shudders to a wrenchingly desolate ending.
The Telegraph (UK) - Caroline Moore Never Let Me Go will probably disappoint readers for whom the
solution of a mystery is all-in-all, or those who want the gratification of
full-on horror. But in its evocation of a pervasive menace and despair almost
but not quite lost in translation - made up of the shadows of things not said,
glimpsed out of the corner of one's eye - the novel is masterly.
The Guardian (UK) - M John Harrison
This extraordinary and, in the end, rather frighteningly clever novel isn't about cloning, or being a clone, at all. It's about why we don't explode, why we don't just wake up one day and go sobbing and crying down the street, kicking everything to pieces out of the raw, infuriating, completely personal sense of our lives never having been what they could have been.
The Postmistress is an unforgettable tale of the secrets we must bear, or bury. It is about what happens to love during wartime, when those we cherish leave. And how every story-of love or war-is about looking left when we should have been looking right.
Masterfully blending true events with fiction, this blockbuster historical thriller delivers a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late 20th, from young love to last love. The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope.
What drives a man to stay in a marriage, in a job? What forces him away? Is love or conscience enough to overcome the darker, stronger urges of the natural world? The Unnamed is a deeply felt, luminous novel about modern life, ancient yearnings, and the power of human understanding.
Lisa See has written a great book! This story is satisfying on many levels, some scenes horrifying, but seemingly truthful, and her handling of the ...
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I was sorry to see that there were so few reviews. I started reading COAL and could not stop. The only thing I am going to say is that I wish ...
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The tragedy, the sorrow, the loss, is almost too much for me to recommend this; on the other hand Mistry made me believe I knew these characters. I ...
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Samsung introduces eReader(Mar 10 2010) Yesterday, Samsung announced the Samsung eReader, a $299 device which allows you to take notes in the margins and share content with other Samsung eReaders....
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Books overtake games as most numerous iPhone apps(Mar 10 2010) The electronic book passed another milestone this month, with the number of books available on the iTunes App Store passing the number of games for the first...
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Never Let Me Go
Booklist - Allison Block
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