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Cover of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Never Let Me Go

  • 319 pages · about 5 hours
  • First published 2005
  • 61 editions

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1 About this book

Kathy is thirty-one and works as a carer. Looking back, she tells the story of her childhood at Hailsham, a secluded English boarding school where the pupils were raised with almost no contact with the outside world, and of her friendships there with two other students, Ruth and Tommy. As the three grow up and leave the school, they come to understand more of what they are and what has been planned for them. Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, published in 2005, is set in an England of the 1990s that differs from the real one in a single, disturbing respect.

  • Science fiction
  • Friendship
  • Psychological fiction
  • Cloning
  • England

2 What to expect

A quiet, unsettling novel narrated by a woman remembering her years at an English boarding school and the two friends she grew up with. The truth about the students emerges gradually and without drama, and the book is less science fiction than a study of friendship, love, memory and how people accept the lives given to them. The voice is restrained and conversational, the pace slow, and the effect is deeply sad.

Good for readers who want: literary fiction with a speculative premise, memory and friendship, and a quiet, moving read.

3 About Kazuo Ishiguro

Born 1954

Sir Kazuo Ishiguro (Japanese: 石黒 一雄, Hepburn: Ishiguro Kazuo; ; born 8 November 1954) is a Japanese-British novelist, screenwriter, musician, and short-story writer. He is one of the most critically acclaimed contemporary fiction authors writing in English, having been awarded several major literary prizes, including the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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