50 Books in 50 Years: Book #3

Book #3: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

This is a fine novel, worth reading. It casts an odd spell, as it starts out seeming fairly straightforward and its underlying questions develop slowly as the book progresses.

To say much more about it would be to ruin the experience of reading it. I'll provide a bit more commentary after the jump for anyone who already has read it, or for those who don't care about being spoiled. (Also for those who don't care about being spoiled, here is commentary from my friend Hayden.)

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It takes quite a while to figure out that the book's narrator is not simply looking back nostalgically on her school days; she is looking back nostalgically on her days in a compound for the raising of human organ farms. She and her friends are clones, and their place in society is to provide three or four organ donations and then die, typically before reaching middle age. One doesn't have to be fantastically alert to know that something odd is afoot (for example, no one at her beloved Hailsham seems to have a family), but the full discovery comes as a bit of a shock.

None of the clones seem to have last names, either, though some have initials. This has been described by some reviewers as "Kafkaesque," and I think that this is an appropriate way to describe it. One very salient point of similarity between this novel and, say, The Trial is the subjects' passivity, even complicity, in their own fate. Josef K. protests his innocence and tries to win his action in The Trial, but never seems to realize that he needn't accept the court at all. He could just walk away, but this doesn't occur to him as an option. Similarly, in Never Let Me Go, the cloned children don't conceive of rebellion — it's not even a possibility. The most they hope for is a "deferment," a short reprieve from their fate. And when even that is denied them, they accept this as if it were a natural phenomenon — a hurricane or an earthquake — rather than a human, and revocable, fact.

Another of my friends was less impressed by this book; apparently the theme of a person discovering that others regard him or her as less than human has already been well mined by science fiction writers. Perhaps; but I still think that Ishiguro does an outstanding job of developing the plot in unexpected directions; and his style is impeccable. Highly recommended.