Never Let Me Go (First Printing)

Ishiguro, Kazuo

ISBN 10: 0571224113 / ISBN 13: 9780571224111

Published by Faber and Faber, 2005

About this Item

First edition, first impression. Shortlisted for the 2005 Booker Prize. Fine: tight and square binding in sharp green boards; a tiny mark to the fore-edge of the page block, else very crisp and clean, presenting as unopened. The unclipped dustwrapper is Near Fine+: crisp and vibrant, Fine but for a little minor wrinkling to the head of the spine and top upper corner tip; presented in a removable, archival-quality Brodart protective cover. All orders are sent very carefully wrapped in bubble wrap and sturdy cardboard. Seller Inventory # M390

Bibliographic Details

Title: Never Let Me Go (First Printing)

Publisher: Faber and Faber

Publication Date: 2005

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

Kathy, Ruth and Tommy were pupils at Hailsham - an idyllic establishment situated deep in the English countryside. The children there were tenderly sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe they were special, and that their personal welfare was crucial. But for what reason were they really there? It is only years later that Kathy, now aged 31, finally allows herself to yield to the pull of memory. What unfolds is the haunting story of how Kathy, Ruth and Tommy, slowly come to face the truth about their seemingly happy childhoods - and about their futures. Never Let Me Go is a uniquely moving novel, charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of our lives.

Review:

All children should believe they are special. But the students of Hailsham, an elite school in the English countryside, are so special that visitors shun them, and only by rumor and the occasional fleeting remark by a teacher do they discover their unconventional origins and strange destiny. Kazuo Ishiguro's sixth novel, Never Let Me Go, is a masterpiece of indirection. Like the students of Hailsham, readers are "told but not told" what is going on and should be allowed to discover the secrets of Hailsham and the truth about these children on their own.

Offsetting the bizarreness of these revelations is the placid, measured voice of the narrator, Kathy H., a 31-year-old Hailsham alumna who, at the close of the 1990s, is consciously ending one phase of her life and beginning another. She is in a reflective mood, and recounts not only her childhood memories, but her quest in adulthood to find out more about Hailsham and the idealistic women who ran it. Although often poignant, Kathy's matter-of-fact narration blunts the sharper emotional effects you might expect in a novel that deals with illness, self-sacrifice, and the severe restriction of personal freedoms. As in Ishiguro's best-known work, The Remains of the Day, only after closing the book do you absorb the magnitude of what his characters endure. --Regina Marler