Never Let Me Go

Considering my last post was largely about how long it took me to read a novel, it is quite exciting for me to announce that I have read a book in one sitting! This used to absolutely be the norm for me – a childhood deprived of television ensured that – but recently I have (rather sadly) experienced reading to be more of a chore. There is a certain amount of irony in doing a degree in English Literature, and finding less and less joy in sitting down with a good book. There is something about a reading list of books one HAS to read that chills the very soul. Nevertheless, today, in my conservatory, in a woolly jumper and alarmingly bright bedsocks, listening to the rain on the glass roof (yes, it is August), I positively devoured Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. I had heard many a good thing about this particular novel – my small and pale best friend often urging me to read it – but it is only now, I regret, in the face of necessity (it forms part of my reading list for next year’s ‘Post-War Fiction and Poetry’ module) that I have deigned to do so.

It is, quite simply, brilliant. For those of you who haven’t read it, please do. Even if you don’t read it now, you will soon wish you had - a film is to be released shortly, with Keira Knightley (who, much as I love her, looks totally wrong for the headstrong and not entirely likeable character of Ruth), and Carey Mulligan (whose career I have followed from her earliest roles; I utterly adore her and think she is wonderful). However, this is only my first impression from a short trailer; no doubt the film itself will enlighten me further. I predict this book will fly into the book charts once more and stay there for a good while.

The plot centres around Hailsham – an idyllic and slightly surreal boarding school, where the children are monitored by guardians; there is no mention of parents. The students’ health is carefully observed, creativity is encouraged and there is no contact with the outside world. It soon becomes clear that the children are clones – bred specifically to donate vital organs when they reach adulthood. Since this is all they have ever known, they accept this, but with the glibness of children, and without realising the full horror of their situation, and the dreadful consequences. What I love about the novel is Ishiguro’s sense of time – the narrator, Kathy, effortlessly dances backwards and forwards through the linear timeline, digressing, following her train of thought, reminiscing the past whilst being all too aware of present events. The three central characters – Kathy, and her two closest childhood friends, Ruth and Tommy (although the term ‘friends’ can only be loosely applied to Ruth, I feel, although I’m sure someone much cleverer than me would be able to argue otherwise…) are trapped in a love triangle so understated and so dominated by Ruth, that it barely seems to exist.

The rather beautiful title stems from a fictional song that Kathy hears and loves. She imagines the lyrics – Baby, never let me go – to be from a previously infertile mother to her newly and miraculously-born child, but it becomes clear that it means so much more than that. Kathy is clinging on to so many things – the idyll of childhood in the harsher adult world; relationships with the people around her; the idea of hope in the dystopian world. Madame, the haughty and enigmatic woman in charge of Hailsham, stumbles across Kathy as a young girl, with her eyes closed and clutching a pillow as if it were a baby, dancing around her room to this song. Kathy opens her eyes from her reverie to see Madame sob, and hurry away, weeping. It is revealed towards the end of the story why she reacted this way, Ishiguro effortlessly changing, with a few words, the readers’ attitude to the rest of the novel.

I don’t want to give away too many details – Ishiguro releases them so deliciously and casually that it would be a shame to spoil the readers’ gradual sense of awareness of what is happening – but the colloquial style of address from Kathy makes reading it (curled up on a sofa in a glass conservatory) blissfully easy. So, dearest reader, when you come across the rich yellow cover with a blurred dancing girl upon the front, have a casual read through the first few pages – I’m fairly sure that you will be utterly spellbound.