Book Review: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

 There is this common advice that says the best way to write is to write about something one knows. And I’ve always taken that to mean that one should also write from the same gender perspective; I have felt that a female author writing from the POV of a female protagonist would be more credible. And so far most, if not all, the novels I’ve read by a female author have a female protagonist. But having read Ishiguro, I have no more doubts that even a male author can go into the mind of a female protagonist and be credible at it.

Never Let Me Go is the story of a group of students living in Hailsham School, a boarding academy in an idyllic corner of England. At first glance, everything seems ordinary, at least as ordinary as a boarding school could get, until many pages later when one learns that these students are far from ordinary. (If you haven’t read the book yet and are planning to do so later, then please know that there are spoilers in this post). That is, the students are actually clones—they are products of a government scheme to institutionalise organ donation, and this program includes establishment of several educational centres where the clones called 'students'  spend their childhood. In many of these “centres”, the students are treated simply as future organ donors, without regard to their emotional well-being. After all, many believe that the students are not capable of deep emotions. But in Hailsham School, the students are treated differently under a group of guardians with a more enlightened view.  From day one, a Hailsham student is always treated with the potential of a normal human being, such that even the students themselves have come to believe that there is nothing different about them versus other humans, and that unlike ‘students’ from other centres, someone from Hailsham can actually aspire to become part of the knowledge work-force (versus the more common menial work that many of the students see themselves in).

But then gradually, the students find out the truth, like this poignant part when Kathy and a group of friends, including Ruth, went looking for Ruth’s ‘possible’ – the model she has been cloned from. In their search, they have come to hope that Ruth’s ‘possible’ is a woman with a white-collar job, working in a glitzy, glass building somewhere in Norfolk (which also stands for a place where they could find everything that’s ever lost, i.e., a Lost and Found corner of the country). To their dismay, the closer they got to the ‘possible’ lady, the more they realized that she wasn’t a ‘possible’ for Ruth after all. This disappointment has convinced them to believe that one rumour they have heard earlier—that they are modeled after white trash, the dregs of society, and therefore this is how the students are likely to end up too. Seeing someone with a decent, white-collar job as a ‘possible’ is therefore wishful—and yet for a time, they wanted to believe that it was possible.

After reading the novel, I listened to Judy Bridgewater’s Never Let Me Go, and I got reminded of that scene where the song was introduced: Kathy as a little girl is dancing with a baby doll, and not knowing any better, has interpreted the song literally (“baby, baby never let me go”), i.e., the mother is asking the baby not to let her go. A guardian who sees Kathy in this scene cries, which Kathy later understood to be because the guardian knew that the ‘students’ at Hailsham will never be capable of having babies. For the guardian, this is also pivotal for it proves once more that the students have a ‘soul’.

Ishiguro’s language is clean and devoid of emotive descriptions, and yet the novel is quite piercing. I had to remind myself several times that what I was reading is pure fiction. If it were real, it would be unbearable to hear of people, cloned or otherwise, who exist simply to extend the lives of others (under some organ donation programme let’s say) and knowing too that in the process, these “donors” are cutting their own lives shorter. This is best illustrated by Tommy who tries to live normally in a recovery centre, knowing that whatever time he spends there is just a lull until the next organ donation. Then the cycle repeats until his own “completion”, i.e., when he has donated everything he could. While earlier he has hoped for a deferral for him and Kathy (who by now have realised and openly expressed their love for each other) so that they could perhaps spend a few years living like a normal couple, in the end he has come to accept his fate: there is no deferral  and that each round of donation will progressively diminish the quality of his life such that towards the end, he has requested Kathy to stop 'caring' for him--he cannot bear for her to see his final degradation, an inevitability with his impending fourth donation.

I am aware that this novel has been adapted into film and I think somewhere at the back of my book/DVD shelf, I might even have the DVD, but somehow having read the novel, I am afraid that the film version might disappoint me (as what happened with some movie adaptations in the past). In any case, I am sure to revisit this post if ever I come to the movie.

This is by far one of the best novels I’ve read and I regret not having read Ishiguro until now – he’s amazing.

And yes the book circuit is buzzing with his latest novel after ten years, i.e., after Never Let Me Go. I will surely check that one out too!

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