Book #14: Never Let Me Go

Title: Never Let Me Go


Author: Kazuo Ishiguro


Have you ever had the experience of looking at someone (in a National Geographic or in King Kong maybe) and thinking-- we look so different, how could we possibly even be same species? In Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go the main characters, students at Halisham School in England, look like everyone else, but they're regarded as complete outsiders, untouchables even, by the people around them.


What Ishiguro does so well in this novel (as well as in Remains of the Day) is delve into the mind of his narrator, and help his audience see the world from the narrator's perspective. By the end of the novel, we see Kathy as fully and heartbreakingly human.


If my review seems a little bit vague, it's intentionally that way. Part of the interesting and terrifying part of Never Let Me Go is slowly realizing why Kathy and her fellow students are different from the world around them. I think it would be hard to read the novel, come to understand and identify with Kathy, and not gain insight into your own view of what makes someone human.


--originally published 3/6/06