The same underlying sadness came through in Never Let Me Go, a story about memories and wasted lives, about friendship and love and what humans are capable of doing to each other. The only experience I’ve had with Ishiguro’s books was The Remains of the Day which pretty much blew me away with its eloquence and subtle undertones. With the dawning clarity of hindsight, the three friends are compelled to face the truth about their childhood–and about their lives now. But she describes other scenes as well: of discord and misunderstanding that hint at a dark secret behind Hailsham’s nurturing facade.

She describes happy scenes of boys and girls growing up together, unperturbed – even comforted – by their isolation. 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.Īnd 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. It goes to show how good a writer Ishiguro is that reading the end of the book despite knowing all the twists was still an enjoyable experience.Īs 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.

I started reading this book and, about three quarters of the way, I watched the movie adaptation, thus “spoiling” the ending. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.So I did something I normally never do. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city.

Never let me go audiobook