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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Apr 2005, 320 pages
Paperback:
Mar 2006, 304 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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A tale of deceptive simplicity that slowly reveals an extraordinary emotional depth and resonance – and takes its place among Kazuo Ishiguro's finest work.
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.
Excerpt
Never Let Me Go
My name is Kathy H. I'm thirty-one years old, and I've been a carer now for over eleven years. That sounds long enough, I know, but actually they want me to go on for another eight months, until the end of this year. That'll make it almost exactly twelve years. Now I know my being a carer so long isn't necessarily because they think I'm fantastic at what I do. There are some really good carers who've been told to stop after just two or three years. And I can think of one carer at least who went on for all of fourteen years despite being a complete waste of space. So I'm not trying to boast. But then I do know for a fact they've been pleased with my work, and by and large, I have too. My donors have always tended to do much better than expected. Their recovery times have been impressive, and hardly any of them have been classified as "agitated," even before fourth donation. Okay, maybe I am boasting ...
I was a little disappointed with Never Let Me Go - not because of the writing, which is as elegant as usual, but that Ishiguro raises many questions but answers few...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan in 1954. He came to Britain at the
age of six when his father began research at the National Institute of
Oceanography. He was educated at a grammar school for boys in Surrey and then
read
English and Philosophy at the University of Kent, Canterbury, followed by a
creative writing course at the University of East Anglia.
In 1981 he published three short stories, then in 1982 he published A Pale
View of Hills. In 1983 he
was nominated by Granta magazine as one of the 20 'Best of Young British
Writers'. An Artist of the Floating World followed in 1986, it won
the Whitbread Book of the Year award and was short listed for the Booker Prize
for Fiction.
The ...
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