288 pages
English language
Published Oct. 28, 2006 by Vintage International.
From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans, comes an unforgettable edge-of-your-seat mystery that is at once heartbreakingly tender and morally courageous about what it means to be human. Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it's only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.
This is probably one of the most disturbing books I have ever read. It is not immediately obvious why this should be so.
This is a bildungsroman with practically no conflict. The result is magnificent, but chilling.
It's hard to convey what sort of novel this is without saying too much--an important part of the reading experience is the unfolding of what is, for a whole sub-population, a mystery.
Told in the first person by Kathy, one of a group of children (focusing on Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy) brought up in a rather idyllic boarding school, sheltered from the outside world. And right away, many questions nag the reader: where are the parents? Why the unusual education? For instance, artwork is stressed, while math, science, and athletics are ignored...
The children themselves are given just a little information, doled out very gradually--they are "told, but not told" what their fate in life will be.
Gradually, a couple of these "students" find out the answers to the riddles, as not many do. It is serious and sad, and told in Kathy's rather detached tone, which challenges the reader โฆ
It's hard to convey what sort of novel this is without saying too much--an important part of the reading experience is the unfolding of what is, for a whole sub-population, a mystery.
Told in the first person by Kathy, one of a group of children (focusing on Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy) brought up in a rather idyllic boarding school, sheltered from the outside world. And right away, many questions nag the reader: where are the parents? Why the unusual education? For instance, artwork is stressed, while math, science, and athletics are ignored...
The children themselves are given just a little information, doled out very gradually--they are "told, but not told" what their fate in life will be.
Gradually, a couple of these "students" find out the answers to the riddles, as not many do. It is serious and sad, and told in Kathy's rather detached tone, which challenges the reader to make his/her own assessment, without manipulation.
At the end, the one question that kept badgering me was, why don't any of these characters try to escape? And I'm still working on that one...
Never Let Me Go is one of the more unusual novels I've read lately, and very thought-provoking in a way that reminds me of Margaret Atwood's novels.
I trust that's not saying too much!
