Never Let Me Go | Kazuo Ishiguro | You can judge this book by its cover.

Never Let Me Go | Kazuo Ishiguro | still with me

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Never Let Me Go

	Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro Knopf, 2005 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 236 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

You can judge this book by its cover.

I have to confess, I read this book because of its cover. It was my first Ishiguro--it won't be my last. Kudos to Lieutenant Colonel O'Gorman's stunning cover photo, `Christina.' The image of the young lady with the Rapunzel locks colored my reading all the way through the book. She was so human--I immediately associated her with Kathy H. And she had mystery--what in the hell was she staring at? Her pose connotes aloneness, an effect enhanced by O'Gorman's use of what I'm guessing was a very long telephoto.

Ishiguro's tale lived up to its cover. He is a master of subtext and indirection, takes his time dribbling out plot details--he's like Margaret Atwood that way--you're on page one hundred or so before you're really sure what fate is awaiting the characters. His most evasive technique of camouflaging the plot is the jargon used by the students at Halisham--`carers,' `the fourth turning.' The students use these words like everyone should know them while the poor reader is left to decipher their meaning through context.

Once their fate became clear to me, I went through a phase where I thought surely they would be rescued. Escape would have been so easy--they weren't under lock and key. And then I began to realize that none of them ever intended to escape--the notion was foreign to them. They were all resigned to the fourth turning. And that made me angry. They had by then so impressed me with their humanity, I saw their destiny as premeditated murder. I kept thinking of Dylan Thomas' famous closer: "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light." I found it incongruous that the students should be able to go gentle into that good night, albeit one body part at a time. Why didn't they rage, rage as I would have done? Weren't they just like you and me? And I believe that was Ishiguro's point all along.

--Ejner Fulsang, author of "A Destiny of Fools," Aarhus Publishing

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still with me

I was typing a review and lost it, which sometimes happens when I touch the computer's drag pad in some electromagnetically inauspicious way. If the fragment got posted, here is the rest of it: I read this last year in the run up to the announcement of the Booker Prize, and it is the book I was rooting for. Never Let Me Go was the first Ishiguro book I had read, and now that I have read everything else of his I can get my hands on, it is still my favorite. To me it is about seeing in a beautiful, open way, despite dastardly restrictions in a cold world. The writing is extraordinary, a magic carpet ride, not too far off the ground. Maybe it is about the possibility of soul, or innocence, or caring truly-- about acceptance, despite the real temptation of resignation. Like Captain Carpenter in the poem of John Crowe Ransom, the book has such courage in it. For me reading this book was breathtaking, and the feeling is still with me a year later-- a feeling of awe, really.

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This story never lets you go!

Having just finished reading the book Never Let Me Go, I cannot stop thinking about the characters or the book's theme. Kazuo Ishiguro is a brilliant writer! I highly recommend this engrossing book!

A poignant metaphor

The wonder and power of this book is that it simultaneously takes the reader on two different, almost opposite, paths. From one point of view, the book begins in what almost, but not quite, appears to be a realistic setting, and only slowly, in small, carefully, measured doeses, reveals itself to be an uncanny, frightening, science fiction fantasy. Yet, at the same time, this same book begins with a set of characters who seem too wound up in their own lives and obsessions to speak to us, but who eventually reveal themselves to embody the deepest and most poignant dilemmas of what it means to be human. Some reviewers have described "Never Let Me Go" as a cautionary tale about the excesses of science and the fearsome possibilities of biological manipulation and exploitation. It is that. But it is, more truly and powerfully, a profound metaphor for the human condition. We are all, really, just like Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy, striving to make sense of who we are, and, at our best, insisting on our intrinsic worth as human beings. That, I think, is the real message of the book, and it is more scary and humbling than any mere warning about medical science could ever be.

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Tough to Start, Tougher to Put Down & Sorry It's Over

After a bit of trouble becoming interested in the story, I was suddenly hooked and had a very tough time putting this down. The sci-fi story that is more adolescent reminiscence than science fiction kept me turning page after page -- the fastest I've read a book in years. Although I could have easily deleted about five pages near the end, it's been several days since I finished it and I still miss it. Planning to read another one of his books next!

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

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