08. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.
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.
With a film starring Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley, how can I resist? I read this book over a long period of time before I saw the film, and even though it was a difficult and heartbreaking novel to digest, it was also very good. I don’t want to give anything away, and I will say that this book is best read without any previous knowledge of the story. Go through it. Mull over Ishiguro’s beautiful, simple prose that is full of meaning and consciousness (or soul, so to speak).
This is a book to be read over a rainy weekend with some hot tea in hand, with contemplation, thought, and true grief. It inspired a heart-rending grief in me for children and adults who do not even exist, and it is certainly a difficult read. It was challenging for me in that Ishiguro doesn’t seem to ever state anything straight out, but rather reaches the heart of the matter by shaping a narrative around it to show the shape of it, so that you can only guess or think about the meaning. I definitely recommend the film after the book, because the film brings to stark present a story that seems rather far away for the most part.