Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
Reviewed by Jack
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Sticking to my dystopian theme, next up is Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. This book follows Kathy, a young schoolgirl attending a seemingly sedate, almost idyllic English country boarding school. As the story unfolds we begin to see the cracks in Ishiguro's hauntingly familiar, shockingly cruel world. Other dystopian literature screams and rails at the reader, forcing them to watch the horror of an imagined world with eyes wide open - Ishiguro uses an altogether more subtle approach to dystopia - whisper to the reader the horrors of a world thinly veiled from our own. This imbues Never Let Me Go with the tantalising qualities of hushed conversation, stolen glances and barbarism too great to ever be spoken in full voice. This makes Kathy's fate, and that of her friends Tommy and Ruth, to have their organs harvested through forced "donation", all the more harrowing and utterly heartbreaking. A brilliant exploration of the most basic of human instincts, to survive, an opus to the joys of a life well lived, a story that weaves together the full, devastating tapestry of human emotion, Ishiguro's novel is one I would definitely recommend.