Never Let Me Go
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and praised by Margaret Atwood as 'brilliantly executed', this novel from Nobel Prize-winner Kazuo Ishiguro has sold over two million copies and landed at number nine on the New York Times list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. High praise, certainly, but in this case it's entirely warranted. The story follows Kathy, narrating from the age of thirty-one, as she looks back on her childhood at Hailsham, a boarding school that appears, on the surface, to be rather charming. Appears being the operative word. Ishiguro places his characters inside a quietly distorted version of contemporary England, one where something is always slightly, unsettlingly off. What awaits Kathy and her closest companions beyond those school gates is not something you'll see coming, even as the clues accumulate around you. At its heart, this is a novel about love, friendship, and the strange tricks memory plays on us. It's also, beneath all that restraint and tenderness, a study of how people come to accept the unacceptable. The Guardian called it 'exquisite', and the New York Times described it as 'a feat of imaginative sympathy'. Both assessments feel right. Readers consistently describe it as a book that lingers long after the final page, one that surprises, unsettles, and stays with you. It's the sort of novel you finish and simply sit with for a moment. Quietly devastating, and genuinely unforgettable.
- Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Publisher: Faber & Faber
- Genre: Religion & Spirituality
- ISBN: 978-0571258093
- Pages: 304 pages