Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro

ISBN 10: 1400043395 / ISBN 13: 9781400043392

Published by Knopf, 2005

About this Item

VG+ in like dustjacket. Tiny spotting along the top spine of the book. Tight, unread copy signed by Ishiguro on the title page. Kazuo Ishiguro s Never Let Me Go is a haunting dystopian novel exploring memory, identity, and the ethics of human cloning. Set in a seemingly idyllic English boarding school, Hailsham, the story follows Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy, three friends who gradually discover their grim fate: they are clones bred to donate their organs. Through Kathy's reflective narration, the novel examines the bonds of friendship, love, and the acceptance of mortality. Ishiguro s subtle, emotionally charged prose reveals a chilling world that mirrors real societal dilemmas, leaving readers to ponder the value of life and the limits of humanity s scientific ambitions. Never Let Me Go received significant recognition and numerous accolades: it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and  the 2006 Arthur C. Clarke Award. Time magazine honored it as the best novel of the year and included it in its list of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923. Additionally, in 2017, Kazuo Ishiguro was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Seller Inventory # Ishiguro.Never Let Me Go

Bibliographic Details

Title: Never Let Me Go

Publisher: Knopf

Publication Date: 2005

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Near Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: 1st Edition

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