Never Let Me Go (Spoilers!)

I guess that I only stay up all night reading books that I don't like (the last time this happened was with I Capture the Castle, although I only stayed up reading that until I stopped liking it and then went to bed).

I'm an Ishiguro fan--I just read A Pale View of Hills and really liked it. Never Let Me Go was just a problem. It was partially a problem because it has such a wonderful and misleading title--it sounds like a very romantic story. Also, it was so different from A Pale View of Hills and The Remains of the Day.

First I'll give you the difference, and then I'll give you the similarity. Never Let Me Go is a futurist distopia--the narrator is a clone who was made for the purpose of donating her organs. The novel is excellent at only gradually unfolding what is happening--the reader discovers it just as Kath, the narrator, herself discovered it as she grew up. I don't care for stories that get drawn out like this one; on the other hand, I stayed up till 5:30 a.m. to finish it, so Ishiguro really had me. The novel is also quite good at grappling with how the rest of society dealt with the clones--recoiling from them in horror; some people, however, made it their life's work to show that the clones had souls, too--they did this through collecting the art that the children produced and showing it in exhibitions around England. The novel itself is the biggest argument that the clones were people with souls--two (Kath and Tommy) fall in love.

All of this I found quite different from Ishiguro's other novels (although there was still the tight focus on one character with the reader's perspective limited by the knowledge of that character). What makes this novel so obviously Ishiguro's has to do with the title and and an event that happens at the beginning of the novel, but isn't explained until the end:

The clones cannot have children. One of Kath's most treasured possessions of her childhood is a tape with a song on it called, "Never Let Me Go." The song is clearly addressed to a man, but Kath always believes it to refer to an infant: "Never let me go. Oh, baby, baby. Never let me go." Kath says, "I imagined it was about this woman who'd been told she couldn't have babies. But then she'd had one, and she was so pleased, and she was holding it ever so tightly to her breast, really afraid something might separate them, and she's going baby, baby, never let me go." One of the guardians sees her as she dances to the music, holding a pillow, imagining that she's holding a baby. This guardian has a different interpretation of the situation: "I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go." This is Ishiguro at his finest--tracing the movement from an old society to a new society; in this boundary and conflict between the two, he finds his themes, whether the setting is in England, Japan or the future.

One thing more that this novel explores: It is quite similar to Children of Men in its consideration of what happens when reproduction is not possible. Not only can the clones not have children, but, in addition, Hailsham, the school where Tommy and Kath and their friends went, is closed. This elimination of their origin breaks the bonds that hold them together. The lack of reproduction--of new students coming out of that school--changes their relationship. Even though Hailsham is inhumane, it is the least inhumane of the schools for the clones. In Children of Men, with ubiquitous infertility comes a lack of hope, a lack of thought about the future that leads to ennui and depression.


(picture)