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| Never Let Me Go | 
 enlarge | Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Category: Book
List Price: £16.99
Buy Used: £0.01
You Save: £16.98 (100%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  64 reviews
Sales Rank: 63249
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.7 x 1
ISBN: 0571224113
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780571224111
ASIN: 0571224113
Publication Date: March 3, 2005
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Dispatched from the US -- Expect delivery in 2-3 weeks. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy!
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| Customer Reviews:
 bewildered March 6, 2007
7 out of 11 found this review helpful
I have a high regard for Ishiguro whose writing style is much to be admired. The theme of the book as it unravelled did not come as a surprise for it is not unusual for him to write something that stretches the mind - read The Unconsoled. But this book left me feeling empty though I did feel a sense of sadness. Why did Kathy and Tommy feel the need to ask for permission for time together, why was there an acceptance that they had no choice with their lives, why did they feel a sense of achievement come their fourth donation when all it signified was completion - a euphemism for death?
It is a book that will certainly make you think, but not in a positive way. More worryingly is that it would not come as any surprise that this way of life may already be a way of life for some people.
Need to read something more uplifting now....
 Has Kazuo Ishiguro even READ this book? February 22, 2007
7 out of 20 found this review helpful
Cynical, outrageously complacent writing -
Like carmenpf74 "Never Let Me Go made me check more than once the name on the cover to reassure me that the author was truly Ishiguro. The story, the style, everything seems written by a different author. It's like one of these cheap paperbacks you buy at the airport and throw away after reading".
In the course of reading this book I developed a theory that Ishiguro had written only a plot summary, which somebody else got paid to write an entire book off of in one night. Then straight to the printers.
I can't believe that Ishiguro has even read this book. The situations and the characters are generic and unconvincing. There is no evidence of research and very little intellectual effort in the writing. The prose is LAZY, heavy-handed and relentlessly dull. The reviews in various quality newspapers including The Guardian all smell fishy. It's like the Harry Potter conspiracy all over again.
How can critics be so unanimously effusive over such a badly written book? Never Let Me Go can almost be considered as important evidence of rampant corruption in the field of literary criticism.
I can see how it could have been a great book, even a classic, in the hands of a less cynical mind. Mr Ishiguro, please read this book. Realise the scale of our disappointment.
 Very Emotional January 3, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I didn't go looking for this book, it was given as a Christmas present by and old girl friend so I started it to be polite. I read it in a day! I put it down several times because I was upset, only to pick it up again to read further. You've read other reviews here so I won't go into the story further. At he end I cried like a baby. I was heartbroken at Kathy's loss of friends, sad because of her tired acceptance of her fate and angry at the wrongness of the society.
I honestly don't know if I enjoyed this book, but its a great book.
 Creepy ambience December 19, 2006
5 out of 14 found this review helpful
The story is narrated by Kathy, an adult looking back on her idealised childhood where she, along with a group of other select children, attended Hailsham, an upmarket boarding school in the British countryside. Although it is never spelt out -- Ishiguro keeps his cards close to his chest throughout the entire novel -- the children are clones bred for future organ donation.
Kathy, now a carer, looks after Hailsham graduates, including two of her classmates, as they go through organ donation procedures. These "graduates" don't just donate one-off organs, they come back repeatedly until, eventually, they "complete", an euphemism for die.
There's no real plot to speak of, other than Kathy recalling incidents from her past, which sounds a rather dull narrative device but works exceptionally well. This is because Ishiguro drip feeds information very slowly throughout the book, so that it is up to the reader to fill in the gaps. As you do so, the horror -- and the enormous sadness -- of the story begins to filter through. I found it to be a deeply disturbing and unsettling read, the mark of a strongly written story.
I thoroughly enjoyed Never Let Me Go as I was reading it. It evoked a kind of creepy ambiance that stayed with me throughout the several days that it took me to complete the book.
However, because of the profound nature of the story, I expected it to have an impact that would last long after I reached the last page, but instead I found myself frustrated by it: there were so many unanswered questions, so many loose ends that hadn't been tied up, so many gaps that I wanted filled. Perhaps it's the journalist in me, but I wanted to grab Ishiguro by the throat and scream, "why didn't those children fight back? Why did you made them so insipid?"
Ultimately Never Let Me Go belongs to the science fiction genre, even though it is set in modern times. It is quite reminiscent of the late John Wyndham's futuristic novels, but you definitely don't need to be a fan of science fiction to enjoy it. I liked it very much, but not enough to rave about it.
A Haunting Read December 18, 2006
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
This was in the positive sense a disconcerting read. The style of prose at first beguiles the reader into a palatable acceptance of the status quo only to be supplanted by an unpalatable revelation of the novel's subject matter. A disarming sense of understatement sustains an atmosphere of chilly horror; polite euphemistic terms such as 'guardian', 'student', 'completion' and 'gallery' change into monstrous labels that laud scientific progress to the detriment of human compassion. The deflationary, yet lyrical style creeps up on you in the same way as unobserved developments in society....And then with a delicate dawning and realization comes the harsh exposure of an inhumane world. This revelatory process begs us to examine what it is to be human; the beauty of the prose elicits sympathy for the utterly mundane characters, yet a feeling of chill and anger develops after their cruel predicaments are exposed. The slow revelation of the novel's subject is akin to our own slow realizations which make us suspicious of something rotten in the state of civilization. A very thought provoking read and one that engenders strong feelings through the beauty of the writing.
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