Never Let Me Go

I finished Kazuo Ishiguro's new book last weekend, but haven't had time to sit down and pen down my thoughts properly in a post. so here it is.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

"My name is Kathy H. I'm thirty one years old, and I've been a carer now for over eleven years."

The opening sentence of Ishiguro's latest work sets the enigmatic tone that characterizes much of the novel which keeps readers guessing at the mystery behind an old English boarding school and the children who grow up there. Yet the novel is least of all a mystery novel. Who is Kathy H.? What is a carer? While questions like these hover at the back of our minds as we dive into Ishiguro's fantastic fictional imagination, the answers merely serve to set the scene for what turns out instead to be a haunting elegy to memory and loss, and most of all, an exploration of what makes all of us tick as human beings. The novel is framed within the reminscing narration of Kathy H--from start until the end, we float from one memory to the next in a patchwork of anecdotes from first Kathy's childhood and then her adult years. Ishiguro's words refuse to let you anchor yourself to any firm grasp of reality as we know it, but instead passes you from one uncertain moment to another, each moment pregnant only with the particular emotional significance as Kathy remembers it. What actually happened in each instance becomes secondary to what the memory of each moment signifies for Kathy in the present. As a consequence, the novel is a dreamworld of emotions stemmed in pieces of memory, which we as readers soon discover to be the root of everything important.

The novel centers itself around the relationship between Kathy, her best friend Ruth and Ruth's boyfriend Tommy. The three grow up in a special boarding school, Hailsham, and then leave together after graduation into their mysterious careers as carers and donors. I won't give away anything in this review, but it suffices to say that their lives as they know it is precarious at best and the story follows the three young friends as the fragility of life itself confronts them face-on when they come to terms with love and loss. The tale told is extremely moving at its climax but the most remarkable achievement here is when we identify with the characters through their seeming soap opera antics--childish disputes, jealous fall-outs, teenage insecurities--for their very real sense of humanity. The irony then of the surprise ending (again, I won't reveal anything) is therefore even more powerful by virtue of this understanding.

The house of cards that is Kathy, Ruth and Tommy's individual identities which Ishiguro carefully constructs using memory as his primary device in the entire novel is a clever play on our interpretation of human nature. Is memory all that makes us who we are? Ishiguro poses this daunting question before pulling the carpet below us right off our feet. The novel, in the end, leaves us with no definite answers, but like any good armchair book for a contemplative evening, sets our cell matter to hard but worthwhile work. In dealing with ideas of memory, Ishiguro ventures into the intimidating and, as some say, fluffy sphere of postmodern thought, but I highly recommend Never Let Me Go for anyone who appreciates good serious fiction.