Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

My Review: 4/5 Stars

Goodreads Average Review: 3.79/5 Stars

“Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.”

Never Let Me Go is generally described as a distopic novel, though I would say that it is an alternate world, coming of age, semi-romance novel. As you can tell by that description, this novel doesn't really fit into one category, and that it was I found so deeply interesting about this novel.While the skewed version of our world is a large part of this novel, this isn't science fiction. This focusses on the protagonist, Kathy, her friends Ruth and Tommy, and her memories of their time together. Generally, I prefer to know everything about a world such as this one, but I found Ishiguro's writing so hauntingly beautiful that I found myself more engrossed in Kathy's story. For me, this novel tells a story of mortality and morality. When your life expectancy is dramatically reduced, what actually remains important in the grand scheme of your life? What does it mean to be human, to have a soul?

In terms of the quality of writing, I found this to be so believable. You have to remember that these are Kathy's memories, and they may not be completely reliable, but that just helps you to see her life how she sees it and it really helps you relate to her. While I understand that this could be a confusing novel for some people because of the way the events can sometimes seem a little jumbled with how the narration jumps back and forwards, I think that this is only reminiscent of how the mind works. We don't remember things as perfect sequences, and little things can remind us of other things and suddenly we're thinking about that instead. This novel captures this so perfectly. Ishiguro also drip feeds us information throughout the novel so that all our questions from the beginning of the novel are slowly answered as the novel progresses, which is reminiscent of how the children in the novel are also slowly made aware of their situation. I think that this is a very effective technique as it adds to the mystery of the situation in the novel. I don't want to go into too much detail because I really don't want to spoil it for anyone, but you will understand exactly what I'm talking about if you go ahead and read the book for yourself.

I would definitely recommend this for any fans of contemporary or science fiction is you are wanting a stepping stone to slightly different styles because I think that this is a perfect mix of both and would appeal to so many people.

For anyone interested in the book but with a little less time on their hands, the 2010 film adaptation (starring Keira Knightly, Andrew Garfield and Carey Mulligan) is also worth a watch as it stays pretty true to the book, with only a few alterations.

Please let me know what you thought of this book, and if you have any recommendations for similar books.

~Kayleigh

Never Let Me Go is available to purchase from these places:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Book Depository