NEVER LET ME GO [Signed]

Ishiguro, Kazuo

ISBN 10: 1400043395 / ISBN 13: 9781400043392

Published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY, 2005

About this Item

Octavo, 288, [2] pages. In Very Good condition with a Very Good condition dust jacket. Green landscape spine with white and yellow lettering. Dust jacket is wrapped in a mylar covering, price is uncut "$24.00", and has stains on the rear cover. Boards have light bumping on the rear tail fore corner, and mild wear along the spine head and tail edges. Textblock has mild wear along the edges and stains on the head edge. Contains a pamphlet from a lecture given by Kazuo Ishiguro between the rear end-pages and pastedowns. Signed flat by Kazuo Ishiguro on the title page. Shelved in Case 6. 1390887. Shelved Dupont Bookstore. Seller Inventory # 1390887

Bibliographic Details

Title: NEVER LET ME GO [Signed]

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY

Publication Date: 2005

Binding: Hardcover

Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: First American Edition, First Printing.

About this title

Synopsis:

From the acclaimed author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans, a moving new novel that subtly reimagines our world and time in a haunting story of friendship and love.

As a child, Kathy–now thirty-one years old–lived at Hailsham, a private school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe that they were special and that their well-being was crucial not only for themselves but for the society they would eventually enter. Kathy had long ago put this idyllic past behind her, but when two of her Hailsham friends come back into her life, she stops resisting the pull of memory.

And so, as her friendship with Ruth is rekindled, and as the feelings that long ago fueled her adolescent crush on Tommy begin to deepen into love, Kathy recalls their years at Hailsham. She describes happy scenes of boys and girls growing up together, unperturbed–even comforted–by their isolation. But she describes other scenes as well: of discord and misunderstanding that hint at a dark secret behind Hailsham’s nurturing facade. With the dawning clarity of hindsight, the three friends are compelled to face the truth about their childhood–and about their lives now.

A tale of deceptive simplicity, Never Let Me Go slowly reveals an extraordinary emotional depth and resonance–and takes its place among Kazuo Ishiguro’s finest work.

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