Synopsis
The narrator of Kazuo Ishiguro's sixth novel is a woman named Kathy H., a graduate of an experimental English boarding school called Hailsham who, many years later, becomes curious about the true nature of the place. Along with Tommy, one of her two best friends from those days, Kathy does some research into Hailsham. What she finds is a stunning revelation about herself and her fellow graduates, and raises questions about cloning, genetic experimentation, and their consequences. Ishiguro's first science-fiction novel, NEVER LET ME GO examines a philosophy that is intrinsically antihuman even as it probes deeply into its characters' touching and vulnerable humanity. NEVER LET ME GO was short-listed for both the 2005 Booker Prize and the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2006-03-14 | | Series: | Vintage International Series | | Edition Description: | Reprint |
| Size | | Length: | 288 pages | | Height: | 8.0 in | | Width: | 5.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 8.0 oz |
Publisher's Note
A reunion with two childhood friends--Ruth and Tommy--draws Kath and her companions on a nostalgic odyssey into the supposedly idyllic years of their lives at Hailsham, an isolated private school in the serene English countryside, and a dramatic confrontation with the truth about their childhoods and about their lives in the present.
Industry Reviews
"[D]isturbingly eloquent....That this stunningly brilliant fiction echoes Caryl Churchill's superb play A NUMBER and Margaret Atwood's celebrated dystopian novels in no way diminishes its originality and power. A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy."
Kirkus (01/01/2005)
"Done with great delicacy and panache...."
Literary Review - D.J. Taylor (03/01/2005)
"Kathy tells her story in (the novel says) 'England, late 1990s,' so the book seems to belong to the same genre as Philip Roth's THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA, counterfactual historical fiction....The strangeness...is ingeniously evoked--by means of literal-minded accounts of things that don't quite add up--and teasing out the hidden story is the main pleasure of the book."
New Yorker - Louis Menand (03/28/2005)
"NEVER LET ME GO is like [THE REMAINS OF THE DAY] insofar as it's about the way people will accept their lot in life even though it may be self-destructive....What begins as a mystery with futuristic undertones ends up an engrossing meditation on the here and now. As always, Ishiguro pulls you under, even as you convince yourself that you're just going wading."
Newsweek - Jeff Giles (03/04/2005)
"NEVER LET ME GO is unlikely to be everybody's cup of tea. The people in it aren't heroic. The ending is not comforting. Nevertheless, this is a brilliantly executed book by a master craftsman who has chosen a difficult subject: ourselves, seen through a glass, darkly."
Slate - Margaret Atwood (04/01/2005)
"The setup is so shocking--in such a potentially dime-store-novel way--that it's hard to believe at first that it issued from Ishiguro's desktop. Has one of our subtlest observers gone to pulp? The novel is the starkest instance yet of the paradox that has run through all Ishiguro's work. Here is a writer who takes enormous gambles, then uses his superior gifts to manage the risk as tightly as possible....[I]f the novel feels a bit too distant to move us to outright heartbreak, it delivers images of odd beauty and a mounting existential distress that hangs around long after we've read it."
New York Times Book Review - Sarah Kerr (04/17/2005)
"...Ishiguro serves up the saddest, most persuasive science fiction you'll read. Set in 'England, late 1990s,' the novel posits a technological breakthrough whose effect is to condemn the children of Hailsham to a fate that was, until this novel, unthinkable. Ishiguro's imagining of the children's misshapen little world is profoundly thoughtful, and their hesitant progression into knowledge of their plight is an extreme and heartbreaking version of the exodus of all children from the innocent in which the benevolent but fraudulent adult world conspires to place them."
Atlantic Monthly (05/01/2005)
"If Ishiguro is a writer of uncommon restraint, he is also a writer who has increasingly made demands of his readers. Despite Kathy's easy and engaging narrative voice, this is true, too, of NEVER LET ME GO: A reader's patience and humility are called for. Kathy H. is an ordinary young woman to whom circumstances have dealt an appalling fate; the ultimate emotional resonance of the book stems, at least in part, from that necessary ordinariness. And those who listen to her story will find themselves amply rewarded by this ambitious, peculiar and deeply affecting book."
Nation - Claire Messud (05/16/2005)
"[A] superbly unsettling, impeccably controlled novel...."
Entertainment Weekly (04/08/2004)
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