Never Let Me Go

by Kazuo Ishiguru | Literature & Fiction |
ISBN: 0571224121 Global Overview for this book
Registered by wingcrimson-tidewing of Balingup, Western Australia Australia on 2/3/2006
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2 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by wingcrimson-tidewing from Balingup, Western Australia Australia on Friday, February 3, 2006

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2005.
On the 1001 Books list.

All children should believe they are special. But the students of Hailsham, an elite school in the English countryside, are so special that visitors shun them, and only by rumor and the occasional fleeting remark by a teacher do they discover their unconventional origins and strange destiny. Kazuo Ishiguro's sixth novel, Never Let Me Go, is a masterpiece of indirection. Like the students of Hailsham, readers are "told but not told" what is going on and should be allowed to discover the secrets of Hailsham and the truth about these children on their own.

Offsetting the bizarreness of these revelations is the placid, measured voice of the narrator, Kathy H., a 31-year-old Hailsham alumna who, at the close of the 1990s, is consciously ending one phase of her life and beginning another. She is in a reflective mood, and recounts not only her childhood memories, but her quest in adulthood to find out more about Hailsham and the idealistic women who ran it. Although often poignant, Kathy's matter-of-fact narration blunts the sharper emotional effects you might expect in a novel that deals with illness, self-sacrifice, and the severe restriction of personal freedoms. As in Ishiguro's best-known work, The Remains of the Day, only after closing the book do you absorb the magnitude of what his characters endure.



Journal Entry 2 by wingcrimson-tidewing at Balingup, Western Australia Australia on Friday, November 22, 2024

I’ve read a number of Ishiguro’s books now - they are all different, and he never disappoints. This is one of his better known ones and generally thought to be one of his best. The novel is certainly sad and unsettling but it is also filled with compassion.

The story is told in the first person by Kathy H. as she remembers and reminisces about her life to date. The tone is fairly dispassionate considering the subject matter, and the narrative meanders and repeats and circles, but it is all so carefully crafted and meticulously set out, resulting in a drip feeding of information to the reader, just as it was done to the students.

Would the students have made different choices if they’d had all the information from the start? Would they have been able to choose at all? Why did they not rebel, or at least question? Or were they so totally lacking in agency that they had no option but to comply? If so, then I guess denial and silence is more understandable than contemplating what is to come.

Certainly a disquieting read, but also a very worthwhile one.


Journal Entry 3 by wingcrimson-tidewing at Balingup, Western Australia Australia on Friday, January 31, 2025

Released 1 wk ago (1/31/2025 UTC) at Balingup, Western Australia Australia

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Posting off as a wishlist tag to tklassy. Enjoy!

Journal Entry 4 by wingtklassywing at Mount Barker, South Australia Australia on Wednesday, February 5, 2025
Thank you for this one from the Australasia Wishlist Tag Game . I’m also really appreciative of the bookmarks and postcard that came along with this and another book in the same package. Xx

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