Faceless, nearly voiceless children, going through all the petty misunderstandings of childhood, albeit children reared in a somewhat posh English academy setting, in the pretty countryside. We do not know what these children look like, or why they find themselves in this odd world, but as we listen to the voice of the narrator, a thoughtful and somewhat precocious girl, and gradually begin to glean the details. Are they orphans? Possibly, as parents are never mentioned.
There are the grim authority figures, although some of them seem touchingly moved by their charges, the children, and there are droning assembly lectures, the "why are we learning this" school lessons that most children wonder about, and we the adult reader recognize all of this, even if we have never been raised in a posh English countryside school dormitory, or academy. It is pretty much life, a little boring, droning, going on day after day. Ah, what is the point. Sigh.
The children pass stories in haunted voices, the delicious stories, such as the girl who wandered outside the gate and then was forced to starve there, or the boy who went beyond a certain patch of ground and was later found tortured and dismembered. The children love passing on these stories though none could say where these tales originated, they have always known them, and so there must be at least some truth to these horrible ghostly stories.
The reader wonders if adult figures began these cautionary tales, the way adults generally do, such as the hungry giant that eats children who do not finish their food in timely fashion. Adults really do mess with the minds of children, and they always have, way back to Baba Yaga, the Big Bad Wolf and every nightmare-generating fairytale from those far back and once upon a time days.
Are these real children going to school in the English countryside? Or are they part of some experiment, or the height of scientific technology. Without spoilers, we do wonder if these are just normal, everyday kids doing what normal, everyday kids do every day, just emerge from darkness into the gradual light of the real world.
Kathy works at her memoir and we see this world through her eyes. She is drawn to Tommy, a boy prone to volcanic eruption of mindless howling fury. And Kathy befriends magnetic Ruth, imaginative and creative Ruth, a dreamer, and perhaps a tale-teller and weaver of mystery. These three, Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth, evolve through their childhood, being told all the while that they and all the students in this English countryside are special, that they have a special mission, to save people.
These children, their whole reason for existing, is to help people. To save people. Saviors, when viewed a certain way. But step around these children and view them from a slightly different perspective, and they are really "poor creatures," walking, talking bags of replacement parts. Do they even have souls?
Through Kathy's gentle perspective we learn about sex and its meaning, we wonder about "possibles" or the original templates upon which they are based, there is misunderstanding, and a jealous seizure of love by controlling Ruth, and Kathy plods onward, only guessing at the meaning of her purpose and her very life, thinking it cannot be much different from any young person's life and ultimate "completion," as everyone dies, everyone completes.
The movie version of Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go is easier to grasp than the novel, the tender tragedy of a manufactured life, a scientifically mandated purpose of life, as the movie provides facial expressions, the worried looks of befuddlement (that any child feels, really), and the empathy of a teacher who knows the whole story, who for some reason feels compelled to share the truth with the children, and the ultimate hopelessness of dealing with a hopeless situation.
Probably the only aspect of this story that pushes into the realm of science fiction, is the setting, England, as it seems like an over-demand for suspension of disbelief (no! not Socialistic England!), whereas taking place in America, you wonder why someone has not initiated this plan as a scientific reality. You could believe it, in America, the land of dollars and sense. Of course, the England of only 100 years ago, all is instantly believable, or English infancy, the days of peasants, serfs, and the unwashed masses, just next door to the aristocracy with their perfumed fox hunts.
Ishiguro's triumph in this story, is that the reader builds a sense of hope for these doomed body parts. The reader wants something better for Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth. The reader realizes these beings are in fact soulful, that they do have the same rights as any other human.
The exact quandary faced by both England and America, in regard to slaves. A terrible institution, all the wise heads nod, terrible, we all agree, terrible, but what is to be done about it? And the institution grinds onward, mindless, chewing up human beings as part of the monetary process. Some must suffer, and die, so others might race jetskis.
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro - Amazon - paperback
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro - Audible - audio book
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro - movie
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