Ishiguro, Kazuo: Never Let Me Go
Never Let Me Go
Writer: Kazuo Ishiguro
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 288
I’ve been eyeing this book for a long time, so when emerald_ibis put this on her list of possible challenge books, I jumped at the chance. I knew it wasn’t straight up literary fiction, but I didn’t know just what kind of speculative element was involved either, so searching for it definitely colored my reading.
Make no mistake, this book is science fiction. *gasp!* I know, right? But it takes a “What-if?” and explores the answers that come out of that question. Your typical SF, particularly hard SF, will explore the answers through a scientific means. However, soft (and in this case, literary) SF explores the answers in terms of humanity. And for my tastes, this is the best kind of science fiction, because we explore the ethics of a scientific concept through how it effects the human race. And in this case, I almost hesitate to call this book science fiction, even though that’s what it is. In truth, it takes a scientific matter that’s very close on the horizon and extrapolates from there.
SPOILER WARNING: if you don’t want to know what the premise of the book is, skip to the last paragraph of the entry.
What is this premise? Cloning. More specific, organ donations.
See, when I hear of stem-cell research and cloning and all that jazz, I think that if we do manage to clone our internal organs for later use, they’ll be preserved in some kind of vat or something until we’re ready for them. However, Never Let Me Go reveals that whole clones are made of people, and when the time comes, the clones give up their organs to their models, one by one.
Except, you don’t know the characters are clones. You don’t even MEET the models these characters are based off of (though that in itself would make another fascinating book). Instead, you meet a group of school-kids. Narrated by Kathy, you learn all about this school called the Hailsham, and gradually, you learn that things aren’t exactly normal. Like the narrator, you begin to figure out bits and pieces of what’s going on until you’ve got most of the truth of the matter without being told.
Mostly. There are occasions in this book where someone sits down and explains what’s going on in a given situation. Towards the beginning, it works, because it solidifies what the reader suspects all along. Towards the end, it feels like a giant weight has been dropped on the reader (as well as the character) because you’re faced with the very real truth that these peoples’ lives haven’t mattered, despite the fact that they are, indeed, people.
That’s the tragedy of the tale: you watch these characters interact, feel how human they really are. I hated Ruth for her selfishness, bemoaned Kathy’s complicity in their friendship, and wished Tommy would grow a back bone and make up his own mind. But well-drawn characters do this. They engage you, remind you of people you know or of yourself. Ishiguro nails the children’s behavior, their imaginations and spite.
Still, clearly this is a book with an agenda. While Ishiguro doesn’t come out and say, “This is bad” through any of the characters (though Tommy’s final tantrum sums it up well), clearly, we’re met to feel the horror of the situation because it happens so humanely. The narrator never goes through being a donor during the course of the book: she’s a carer (what donors are before they donate), and she takes care of those people giving donations, which leads to her caring for her childhood friends, Ruth and Tommy. Every aspect of this story is quiet so that the horror of it all sneaks up on you, as do the deeper questions: is life worth preserving at the cost of others? Are our lives as futile as that of the clones, only the clones are simply more aware of their fate? And how can a person, or a society, deny a clone his or her humanity? How can we simply look at them as objects?
They’re great questions to consider, especially for the future. And make no mistake, I still think that research that would allow us to duplicate our internal organs is a good thing, provided we don’t put other peoples’ lives at risk. So whatever the end game, the human race has a lot to consider and weigh before we dive into the next big break-through in medicine. But if we make decisions carefully, and not selfishly, the benefits are endless.
Getting back to the book, there’s some mechanics to consider: the style gets sloppy at times. Any time a narrator has to verbally get off tangent (oh, but I was going to tell you about THIS, wasn’t I?), or the narrator is consciously manipulating the order of information, it’s a bad sign. It’s tiring, especially for readers who just want the story. Ishiguro also has a tendency to repeat information or scenes when it’s not necessary. The advice in workshops is to always trust your reader, and this is a case where trust was necessary. Also, this is quite possibly the worst opening I’ve ever read. Had I not had an extreme interest to read this book, had I just picked it up randomly, I would’ve been completely turned off by the opening: “My name is Kathy H. I’m thirty-one years old, and I’ve been a carer now for over eleven years.”
Okay, it’s boring to me. But it does raise questions, like wondering why people only have initials as last names. And of course, the question of what a “carer” is. The answers soon become clear, though I found myself wondering, and wishing, we’d meet the models. The original person. There’s a question raised as to what kind of people get clones for themselves, and Ruth’s explanation (rather, her tirade) is far from satisfying, nor is it logical. So we never see the socio-economic side of this, which is to say, we never see the people who benefit from their donors, and we never see the reactions of those people who can’t afford to have donors in the first place. I think that was my one beef with this story, but it’s not a major one.
All and all, it’s a worthy read. Something else I strongly recommend to anyone with a literary bent, or people concerned with where we’re going medically as a society. Once I started reading and putting the pieces together, I think I remember hearing what the main concept behind the book was, so I was kind of spoiled to begin with, but it didn’t matter so much, because the tale is with the characters, and the premise provides a backdrop, not a driving point. Instead, the premise just reveals the true tragedy of the characters’ lives, and while the end of the book isn’t a downer, you can’t help but imagine what it must be like for the narrator long after the pages are finished.