Never Let Me Go

In a recent review of The Remains of the Days, I said that Ishiguro's characters "revel in tedium," and this happens again in Never Let Me Go. This time, that tedium is their attempt to make sense of their lives. It's either unthinkable or too difficult for these characters to accept that they are just disposable, that they have no interiority. The book is evidence that they do in fact have that interiority, but the ending makes clear that there's a whole set of cultural machinery set up to treat them as resources rather than people.

In that review of The Remains of the Day, I said the book "is deep in the weeds of something that seems ridiculous while all of these other more important things are happening around the edges." I'm realizing that this is Ishiguro's modus operandi. He's not ignoring the important historical events - he's just telling us what happens around the edges of those events.

It’s dangerous to reminisce. There are so many ways to get trapped in the past: “if only I had...”; “things were so much better then...”; and we all know people stuck in their imaginary what-ifs. Then there’s reading someone else’s reminiscences—there’s so much that can go wrong there. In the right hands, though: wow. This was a masterpiece that kept me engaged and thinking; it will likely stay with me for a long time.

If you haven’t read this, and are over forty: read it. Don’t try to learn “what it’s about,” don’t read cover-jacket blurbs: this isn’t a book ”about” anything, it’s a journey; one in which you might find more than a handful of parallels with lives you recognize. Including perhaps your own. Ishiguro’s language and insights are sublime. Most importantly for me, the narrator’s voice was so perfect: he could’ve made her wistful, or bitter, or resentful. There is drama and cruelty in the story, both individual and societal. Loss and longing. It could’ve gone many ways, but what I got from it is a reminder, both sobering and refreshing, that this is the life we have. We can reflect usefully on our growth: the insecurities we had (and may still carry), how our unspoken assumptions wreck the possibility of communicating with others. The narrator’s life has been set on a course that is likely harder than yours or mine, yet her voice is one of curiosity, thoughtfulness, never self-pity. She thinks back to choices and decision points, understanding that things may have gone differently, and she moves on. I suppose most of us wonder, from time to time, if we’re wasting or have wasted our lives. We may never know, and some days it may feel more like it than others, but even in the deepest pits we still have some agency to do our best. Few of us will have the lives we’ve dreamed, but we can still make something out of what we have.

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!