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Never Let Me Go  By  cover art

Never Let Me Go

By: Kazuo Ishiguro
Narrated by: Rosalyn Landor
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Editorial reviews

As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.

Publisher's summary

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • From the acclaimed, bestselling author of The Remains of the Day comes “a Gothic tour de force" (The New York Times) with an extraordinary twist—a moving, suspenseful, beautifully atmospheric modern classic.

As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were.

Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.

©2005 Kazuo Ishiguro (P)2005 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

  • National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee, 2005, Fiction
  • Alex Award Winner, 2006

"Stunningly brilliant fiction....A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience." (Kirkus Reviews)

"Ishiguro's elegant prose and masterly ways with characterization make for a lovely tale of memory, self-understanding, and love." (Library Journal)

"So exquisitely observed that even the most workaday objects and interactions are infused with a luminous, humming otherworldliness.....Ishiguro spins a stinging cautionary tale of science outpacing ethics." (Publishers Weekly)

"So exquisitely observed that even the most workaday objects and interactions are infused with a luminous, humming otherworldliness. . . . An epic ethical horror story, told in devastatingly poignant miniature. . . . Ishiguro spins a stinging cautionary tale of science outpacing ethics." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Perfect pacing and infinite subtlety. . . . That this stunningly brilliant fiction echoes Caryl Churchill’s superb play A Number and Margaret Atwood’ s celebrated dystopian novels in no way diminishes its originality and power. A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Ishiguro’s provocative subject matter and taut, potent prose have earned him multiple literary decorations, including the French government’s Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and an Order of the British Empire for service to literature. . . . In this luminous offering, he nimbly navigates the landscape of emotion—the inevitable link between present and past and the fine line between compassion and cruelty, pleasure and pain." —Booklist

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What listeners say about Never Let Me Go

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Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Kc
  • 05-23-05

Be patient; it will pay off

The detail is tedious. Everyone is so terribly sensitive, and trivial interactions take pages. But every few pages there is a "ping," of something not right, or a growing realization that there are large things missing in this detritus of kids at a boarding school fussing about their feelings. Then you slowly realize what is missing, and some of the trivial events reappear with deeper meaning. Two-thirds of the way through you realize the importance of the author's emphasis upon tedious little spats and hurts and crushes, and then the reader (who is fine) annoys you because she can't read fast enough as the horror mounts and the jigsaw gets completed. It is not science fiction at all, as some say; it is all at hand and little prevents society from seeking this path to health.

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116 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Nothing short of brilliant

I listen to audiobooks everyday. I've really enjoyed many but never have I been so enthralled as with this book. The plot & pace were mesmerizing as was the narrator. If you like an eery mystery with a lot of detail this is for you. If you want something very fast paced that doesn't make you think then don't bother.

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99 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Moving, haunting, but slow developing

I loved Ishiguro's biggest novel, Remains of the Day, considering it one of my all time favorites. Since then I haven't found Ishiguro has been able to recapture the nuances of Brittish emotion that he did so masterfully in Remains.

This novel comes very close, though.

I wasn't sold at first, thinking it was uncomfortably close to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. But it comes around, and the farther you get the more fascinating it becomes once you learn "the big twist", always with an unflinching first person look at an unknowable life ripped from a Aldus Huxley-style sci fi plotline.

One BIG strength: it is beautifully read.

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89 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Ishiguro's McGuffin

This writer is truly a genius. He weaves a spell that keeps you bound to the story through much seemingly tedious detail. Whatever else this book is about, it is about the steady erosion of hope, about repressing what you know and, like many of his books (especially "Remains of the Day"), about how many of us can't reach out and grasp the happiness right in front of us. This book will be in my pantheon of classics -- and I never would have read it if our book club hadn't picked it out!

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73 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

A little too glancing

Kathy is a pupil at a special boarding school called Hailsham, which trains its students to be "donors" and "carers". Though Kathy describes her work and education in casually vague terms, it quickly becomes clear that there's a more troubling purpose to it. However, Ishiguro shies away from explaining or examining the real issue directly (at least until the end), instead conveying the story's emotional tone through Kathy's reflections on small details of her life and her relationship with two close friends from Hailsham, especially as their roles approach a final decision point.

There's certainly some resonance to Ishiguro's understated approach to his story, but I found it a little too glancing. Once it was clear to me why Hailsham existed, which happened about a third of the way into the book, I wanted more directness. How could this have happened in post-World War II Britain? And why would the characters, who seem to be intellectually and emotionally normal people, and aren't too restricted in their adult lives, accept their lots so passively, rather than, say, running off to Mexico? To me, there were a few too many logical questions that Ishiguro didn't adequately address, and the main characters' relationships, though they are drawn with a poignant mix of adult and juvenile behavior, didn't have enough going on to carry the heavy moral questions that the book poses. I had trouble taking the premise seriously without knowing more about the political realities of the novel's world. All in all, though the writing is good and there is some power in a scene towards the end, I found this one to be a bit of a disappointment as a whole.

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67 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Haunting...it will never let me go

This book is not for everyone. It's a slow burn filled with pages of detailed descriptions of trivial things that at first make no sense. However, there is a big pay-off for the reader that sticks with the story. Eventually you begin to piece together what is happening and the reason behind all the detailed and trivial descriptions. This book was such a haunting tale of advanced science and the ethics behind it. This book will stick with me for years to come and most likely I will never be able to let it go.


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62 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Won't Let You Go

Don't think that you'll be able to finish this masterpiece and then forget about it. This remarkable novel is too bizarre and unsettling to easily put out of your mind. I couldn't. Perfectly written, expertly read, and very, very sad.

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47 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Creeped me out

So well written and narrated. Interesting, too - in the beginning before you learn who these people are and what fate is about to befall them. Although I won't spoil the essence of the story - it creeped me out. Although I love to be swept up in a fantasy story - this was not a fantasy that I wanted to be a part of.

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40 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

On the meaning of life

I ended up recommending this book to a colleague who teaches a philosophy class entitled "The Good Life." He plans on using it, saying it is the best novel that he has found so far.

Because that is what the book is about and that is why it seems slow to some people. It is not action packed. The novel will not go places that you would expect a movie to go -- revolution, loud cries for justice. Though the characters seem to be very different from us, they are not. Their lives are just compressed. In their childhoods they understand and don't understand what their lives will be. They have opportunity to have all the things that philosophers says makes life worth living: friends, love, study, work, everything except children.

The book makes us ask, if this is all there is, is life worth living?

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40 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Good for pondering, not entertaining

The premise for the story is good but it is just so long and tedious so that the book is anticlimactic and a letdown. It is a glimpse of a future society that makes one wonder if we are on the slippery slope (similar, as I recall to "1984" when I read it 35 years ago). But the characters are maddening since they seem intelligent and bold but it never occurs to them to question authority. Although I understand the topic is serious in nature, couldn't there have been even one amusing anecdote in the nearly 10-hour story? The book is worthwhile if you like to ponder or discuss our society and the direction it could be taking, but its not an entertaining "read."

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34 people found this helpful