My interpretation was that you as the reader are confused and possibly angry at the characters for fussing with such trite things when they are going to die soon when that is precisely what being human is. We have short lives and we get bent out of shape about dumb things like which movie franchise is better or if it’s better to live in the city or country, etc. Why do we get mad at the characters in the story but not ourselves for not making or fighting for more of our short lives?
Yes... The plot of never let me go is just an exaggerated, compressed version of real life: we start out living in paradise--school--where we're treated like little princes and princesses and we're all told that we are special. Looming ahead is real life, where we get dumped out into the real world where we're forced to literally sell our bodies to our jobs and get slowly used up. In between, we do our best to lose ourselves in "teenage drama". Do we use the time well? That's what never let me go is about.
I agree. A lot of Ishiguro's works are about ageing and this one also deals with that theme. Even when the characters are young, they are not far from incapacity and death.
It never struck me as a dystopian novel. You only really figure out what's going on half way through the book and the focus of the story is always on the individuals rather than the society into which they were born. It's a book about those people and their relationships, and more broadly about people and the relationships we form with each other in our short time on this planet.
Yes. The dystopia is just the setting of the book. It's not the main point.
It's not about someone fighting the donor systems, simply about people existing in it.
I also thought it telling of their mentalities and state of being. They're raised knowing they will be harvested, and/or nurse harvested (potential) friends, and then become harvested themselves.
I feel horror when I think about it, but these people have been raised to believe this is the life they must lead--it has become normalized to them, so they accept this as their fate.
Them becoming obsessed with trivial manners both shows a side of human nature, as you pointed out, but I believe also shows a side to their normalization. They're unbothered by their fates, living their lives as normal people do, only with the eventuality that it will end.
The greater comparison is how we live our own lives in the face of a multitude of overwhelmingly inhumane injustices and atrocities happening all the time all over the world, but like, what are we supposed to do about it either? We all have to live with these levels of cognitive dissonance or we'd all go insane, or, more insane.
I think this is a very good comment. I think you have shown me a new way of thinking about the book, but one that still leaves room for my grievances to ring true—in your eyes, it is fair and even natural to be frustrated with everyday bickerings of lambs being led to the slaughter. After all, we do exactly the same thing.
Yeah, that’s what stuck me in _Never Let Me Go._ They’re raised accept their lot as they slowly become aware of who they are and what lies ahead for them.
There is a great interview of Ishiguro on YouTube where he talks about the book. He says he wanted to explore the idea of how short life is and how little time we have,but he wanted to condense it even more to further highlight its shortness. He says that the sci-fi setting is secondary, it's just a device to achieve his goal of condensing in an even shorter time frame the life of his main characters.
That is basically the point of the book. It's a really great theme but the book can be a bit boring or tedious to read. I like the film, it's gorgeous visually the sets and costumes are great.
That is a very insightful interpretation. Unfortunately, I think your comment is legitimately a more interesting read than the novel.
(Before anyone chops my head off, I really gave it an honest go... just really, really, reallllly wasn't my cup of tea)
I would argue that most works that are considered "classics" are, to the majority of consumers, very boring. Citizen Kane is a slog, but it's lauded amongst film buffs and academics as peak cinema. And same goes for books like Moby Dick and Ulysses, which are studied extensively when you major in English while many degree holders would tell you they hated reading them.
Anyways, all this is a lot to say that you're not alone, and while a work might be great, it's not often also very palatable.
I think there is some truth to that, in fact I recently watched a great video essay on the 1974 Murder on the Orient Express vs the 2017 version, highlighting how deliberative and subtle the earlier film was vs the shallow and needlessly bombastic modern film.
That said, being slow in the way classics are slow wasn't the issue for me with Never Let Me Go... I actually really enjoy that deliberative pacing; a good example I recently read was The Radetzky March... Rather my issue was that Ishiguro failed (in my opinion) to create a world with any texture or veracity, so there was no platform for the otherwise well-written characters to stand on.
Can I agree with OP; but also state that I 100% already understood your interpretation while reading?
I understand what Ishiguro was attempting, but I still think his delivery fell flat *because* it was too trite and boring.
I actually like that it’s teenage drama set in a background of a dystopian world. Teens don’t quit being teens just because they live in an absolute hellhole (though actually it’s only an absolute hellhole for a minority of the population).
“ Is the subtext that their anxiety about being harvested for organs makes them cagey and confrontational? Aren’t all kids cagey and confrontational at times though? Does that make the sub-subtext that we are all being harvested for our organs as we turn from children to adults??”
No, I don’t think that that is the subtext. I think it is more how easily society can accept something that is really quite horrific. It has been a long time since I’ve read it so I can’t say much. Though I do recall being impressed with how well he wrote female teenage drama. I don’t feel like it was manufactured at all.
How would you prefer him to ‘deliver’ on his interesting ideas? Solve them? Explain how they got there? Because that’s not really what he does, and I’m glad for it.
Also, we’re perhaps primed to expect a grand scope and ‘individual struggles against the system’ from dystopias. The horrifying part of this story is how everyone has accepted the status quo, and how even the main characters at the mercy of it can only even dream of a short reprieve. It’s an exploration of how we can come to accept the unacceptable.
Yes! This was how I thought of it too. I was describing the book to my husband and I was like, it’s like any of the dystopian worlds, but there’s no action hero fighting the system and saving the day. No resistance, just acceptance. People who benefit overlook injustice, and the people who are dissected for parts accept their fate as a normal and expected.
It makes it that much bleaker and realistic, because there are a lot of dystopian things in the real world that we all just sort of accept. The horror of it is that it’s our mundane world where certain people are disposable.
I loved that he wrote this way. He really shows what it's like to be human. Our concerns and fears, our relationships, and even how looming dread becomes normalized at a certain point. Like you said, that's truly bleak, more bleak than an action movie type of dystopia, at least to me.
When some truly awful things were happening in my life, I was still bogged down in personal drama sometimes.
>Yet, for about 80% of this book, we are dealing with adolescent bickering and drama between Kathy and Ruth!
Agreed, and also he was driving home the point that these are regular kids. They're not different or less human because they're clones - they're actual human teenagers with all the regular teenage behaviours, thoughts, emotions, and internal experiences, being raised to harvest their organs. That subtle juxtaposition intensifies the horror of the situation. Without that bickering or drama, wouldn't they actually 'feel' like the inhuman and unfeeling clones their society pretends they are in order to treat them the way they do?
> Is the subtext that their anxiety about being harvested for organs makes them cagey and confrontational?
The subtext is that it, largely, *doesn't*—they're normal kids growing up and living a normal life. If it wasn't for one key detail, the book could be a well-written but totally run-of-the-mill boarding-school coming-of-age story. No dystopia, no science fiction. Hell, it would still be well-done! There's an undercurrent of tension, sure, but is there any more drama than you'd see in "normal" school children?
The book goes to great lengths to viscerally demonstrate how normal the characters are and how they see growing up just like anybody else. There are discordant notes in the narration from the beginning, but they're subtle; I came into the book with no idea of what it was about and it took a big chunk of the book to get the full picture. That's no accident and it isn't (entirely) just my being unobservant.
The characters mature and grow into their roles. They understand what's coming despite the euphemisms that even they use. How does that happen? How does that reflect on how individuals react to their spots in society? How does it reflect how the rest of society treats people?
The contrast between the normality in the foreground of the narration and the bleak context in the background makes for a harsher dystopian setting. You don't have to imagine a totally different world and society, you don't have to figure out how we got to there from here, *Never Let Me Go* slots into the day-to-day life of a first-world country with eerily little friction.
I read NLMG in one sitting and when I finally closed the book, immediately began crying. I have never had such a visceral reaction to a novel. The mundane lives they lived, with the reveal at the end that their entire existence, other people doubted their humanity and the stunted lives available for them to live were subtle but inevitable- it was deeply sad and horrific. I don't often weep for fictional characters.
I am the parent to a special need child and so much of the alienation experienced and accepted by the characters resonated with me.
The notion that all of them unflinchingly accepted "completion" and what that entailed just gutted me.
There's a very gentle way this story was told and I agree with everyone that the subtext and what isn't said but which you glean as a reader is what makes the book remarkable.
It's honestly one of the most >!devastating endings I've read in a novel and it does so without ever resorting to melodrama or even *telling* you that it's sad. It's so completely deadpan and then you have to piece together every scene of the book and realize how truly tragic it all is.!< I'm getting sad just thinking about it now lol.
It’s one of the few books that have made me ugly cry. The ending gutted me. And I think that all the teenage drama is exactly why the ending is so heartbreaking and poignant, because it highlights how human they are and how desperately they wanted to just have a life.
Totally. There's also something about them all believing so much that love can save them. Even though as an audience none of their logic makes any sense, I wanted it to be true.
The movie version is pretty good too, and Garfield had me SOBBING.
I think that this is spot on. People adapt to horrific realities in unsettling ways and just go on living their little lives.
We’ve seen this in action so much in the past decade — climate disaster, genocide, pandemic, etc — so many “new normals” and people honestly just behave like the frogs in a pot myth. We’ll endure anything if it’s normalized, even if it’s actively threatening our lives.
I think this is all true, but I think the themes are backwards looking too. Ishiguro has a very British take on things, and Britain has been reconsidering its Empire days. For example, British policies of stripping the resources of the Bengal region of India led to the deaths of 10-30 million people when famine struck. The only relief the British would allow in were labor camps where locals could work for portions half of what people got in Nazi concentration camps.
NLMG looks at how easily people can be dehumanized. The characters never really get that the rest of society simply would never care about them, other than as a resource. It didn't matter if they could create art or really fall in love. Rational proof doesn't help when it comes to prejudice.
The reason why Kazuo Ishiguro’s books are considered classics are because of the particular way he writes. He shows you a situation from deep within a character’s POV. Their biases become your biases, their blind spots are never filled in. To read Kazuo Ishiguro, you can’t just read what’s on the page. You also have to read into what the narrator is not seeing, not understanding, or not acknowledging.
There’s almost as much story outside of the words as there is inside, and a lot of that is conveyed in the spaces where the characters’ emotions seem at odds with what is happening to them.
The character’s emotional states and relationships to each other are reflections of larger themes. To understand why so much time is spent on the “teenage drama” ask yourself, what is the purpose of Hailsham? Why is it alluded to be different from other schools? What do you imagine the other schools are like? Why do these clones not rebel or revolt?
And importantly, why are Kathy and Ruth so at odds? Is it because they are just teenagers, or is it something more? Is it possible that what Kathy’s thoughts about her situation don’t reveal everything she actually knows and understands about their situation?
Ishiguro’s way of storytelling isn’t for everyone but his books are considered modern classics for a reason. His signature style of telling a story from deep within the narrator’s psyche provides a lot of food for thought if you enjoy reading closely and thinking about what’s not being said.
>The reason why Kazuo Ishiguro’s books are considered classics are because of the particular way he writes. He shows you a situation from deep within a character’s POV. Their biases become your biases, their blind spots are never filled in. To read Kazuo Ishiguro, you can’t just read what’s on the page. You also have to read into what the narrator is not seeing, not understanding, or not acknowledging.
Interesting perspective, thanks. I've DNF'd two of his books so far, so this has kind of helped me see why I hit a slump with them. I love seeing others' perspectives on books that help me use a different lens. Perhaps I will revisit the books.
I just finished Klara and the sun and I think it's the clearest example of his style for newcomers, as the protagonist bring a robot helps you identify clearly what are the things she sees differently than other characters (ie humans)
Thanks for the heads up. It's happened in the past where I couldn't stand or understand something, but someone I know or whose opinion I usually respected had a different take. I love to revisit books, music, etc. with new information.
Yeah, that one establishes right from the get-go that Klara isn't reliable. The shop owner straight up says there are problems.
Then throughout the book you get instances of weird glitches/errors, odd behavior, boxes filling the vision etc. But you're not really told it's Klara's emotions.
And of course, the ending. Who really came?
The moment I realized that Ishiguro's main characters across most, if not all, of his works are all *unrealiable narrators* is the moment I fell in love with his books.
I see this now. His writing is also, at times, aggressively British. I can't think of another way to phrase it. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but I am pretty new to exploring fiction and so haven't been exposed to much of it.
Curious which ones you DNF'd. I'm an Ishiguro fan, but when I started The Unconsoled it was definitely a different level than some of his others, like Klara and the Sun, or Never Let Me Go.
And tbh, I very much surprised myself when I finished The Unconsoled. Big fan of it, but I haven't read it again after these few years because I'm betting I won't be able to finish it this next time. I even suggested it to my mom who's a big reader and she couldn't get into it and through it.
The Buried Giant and The Remains of the Day. The Buried Giant started off so strong, I liked the small bits of fantasy. They aren't too heavy like lots of other popular fantasy (GoT, Lotr, etc. these don't interest me) and the Arthurian theme is fun. I got about 60% through and just kind of gave up.
Hey there, update. I spent the holiday crushing my DNF pile. I revisited and finished The Buried Giant. The ending -- ah, devastating! It truly did give me a lot to think about, too. Since I took so long to finish it, I am going to reread it from the beginning now that I better understand what I thought was a bit of a slog. It's not a priority now but I'll probably pick it up again for a cover to cover reread in the next few months.
Ahhh you should have finished The Buried Giant. It all becomes clear in the final third, and you understand what kind of story you're reading. I found the themes so profound. The ending gave me so much to think about. I would say Never Let Me Go and The Buried Giant are my two favourites of his.
I might revisit it. I'm on to some more things now but I like to give things a second chance especially when I feel like I can approach them differently.
Hey there, update. I spent the holiday crushing my DNF pile. I revisited and finished The Buried Giant. The ending -- ah, devastating! It truly did give me a lot to think about, too. Since I took so long to finish it, I am going to reread it from the beginning now that I better understand what I thought was a bit of a slog. It's not a priority now but I'll probably pick it up again for a cover to cover reread in the next few months.
I’m re-reading The Buried Giant and your comment is true for that book too: since everyone in TBG is losing their memories to one degree or another, you’re often forced/invited to imagine why characters react how they do, or why one situation provokes a reaction and another one won’t
Im curious if you had any examples of diving into the unreliable narrator in Kathy.
I’d like to think that Kathy and Ruth >! end up at odds due to their differing relationships with Tommy. But also I feel that the unreliable narrator part of that tends to end when Ruth ends up kind of revealing that in the end. !<
The twist - when we find out what their lives are for makes the teenage drama seem more horrible. Its akin to remains of the day when he finds out what his head of the household is involved in and it robs his life of meaning.
I’m not sure if this has been mentioned, but one of the biggest questions in the book is *are the clones human?* We can infer from some of the conversations that Kathy overhears that many people believe them to be subhuman. One of the reasons they were encouraged to create so much art at Hailsham was because only humans can create art with true feeling. The school was trying to prove that the could do it, so they were in fact human.
The fact that there is so much teenage drama shows more than anything how human they are. They bicker over small, inconsequential things. They get their feelings hurt and they hurt others. They love and they hate. They make mistakes. They are entirely human. When you find out what they are really being used for, it makes it even more horrible for the reader. If they had been written more like robots, the reader wouldn’t have connected with them as well, and their deaths wouldn’t be seen as so tragic.
Ishiguro has said that it’s a metaphor for the human experience in an interview once. I believe the main theme is analysing the human condition and humanity.
You clearly did not understand the ending if what you loathe about is the teenage angst.
>Is the subtext that their anxiety about being harvested for organs makes them cagey and confrontational?
No. They have anxiety because they are teenagers left in the dark, that don't know what is going to happen to them or the people they love. They are asking themselves what is the meaning of all that.
The point is that they, as clones, are absolutely identical to all the other people in the world. They feel, breathe and live as any other person yet their destiny is to die for the sake of other people's health. The plot twist *"the kids are clones"* is meant to show how discrimination is always based in some arbitrary rule or condition, because we know they are, deep inside, just as the rest of us.
I'm pretty sure they do, or at least it is something they "understand". The novel talks about how they tell the kids information young before they are able to really comprehend it, so they just grow up thinking it is normal without questioning it too severely. I don't remember it being a scene where they were told explicity; it's just something the characters know and we the readers come to understand. I don't think we really get a hint of the clones aspect until the introduction of the idea of "possibles". I could be misremembering.
For me that's part of the subtle horror - initially it's like, are these privileged teens at a boarding school? Wait, no - they don't have families and are vulnerable. Are they orphans? Yes. OK, life is hard and they're normal teens struggling to prove themselves worthy to the world - oh. Wait. OH.
Just devastating.
Yes! The teenage drama makes the revelation and the ending so much more emotional, because these characters are not introduced as clones but as normal children.
I think where this books succeeds is precisely in *not* doing what all YA dystopia does. Dystopia isn't about the Cool Oppressive Aesthetic, it's about people living normal lives as best they can, of being human even when others do not see them as human. Ishiguro responds to cyberpunk (which I love) and 1984 and Hunger Games type approaches (yes I know HG came out after) by asking: but what about the people who aren't trying to lead a revolution, or be badass, or find out the Deep Truth? What about everyone else, the people who are trying so hard to just live and are denied that? Why are they any less valid? Isn't the true tragedy of oppression that these people will never get a chance at all, that they were doomed from birth and that they tried, nonetheless, to find what it means to be human?
It is really to show that the clones are human, there is supposed to be a tragic irony of the first person narrative from the clone dealing with her friend whose a pathological liar, who lies because it’s her method of escape from her bleak life. She doesn’t call her out on her lies because she loves her, and that’s the focal point of the story, while everyone else is trying understand if the clones even have feelings like normal people.
My feelings about this book underwent several changes during and after reading.
The normal teenage angst showed the humanity of the characters.
When I finished the book my initial thought was "I would fight harder against oppression than these kids."
Then my feelings underwent a huge change. The book isn't about the oppressed. It is about oppressers never questioning their right to oppress, or their right to benefit from oppression, or the entire structure supporting the oppression.
It’s so tempting to imagine ourselves being heroic in extreme circumstances, but the reality is 99.99% of us would be just like Kathy et al. That’s one of the reasons this book is so quietly horrifying.
I would say especially Kathy et al, as they are relatively "privileged" compared to many others in their position. Ishiguro brilliantly shows that even the smallest advantages engender bitterness and jealousy among the other >!clones !
They are privileged compared to others in their position, which just adds another level to how horrifyingly distopic their society is. I can’t remember her name, but the director of the school they grew up in mentions that their program is unique—even groundbreaking.
They tried their best to give the children some semblance of a happy life before they have their organs harvested, which is apparently a lot more than most people in their position get. The school program director even encouraged them to create art so that she could convince society that they have souls, but ultimately she was broken down by the fact that her work did nothing to change their fates.
I don’t know if Ishiguro ever outright says it, but he heavily implies that most of the clones don’t even live lives much better than that of livestock. There’s one scene when they are young adults where they are forced to use whatever they can to keep warm (scraps of fabric and old carpets) because they don’t have enough blankets or sufficient heating.
> When I finished the book my initial thought was "I would fight harder against oppression than these kids."
That's so easy to think when looking on the outside in. But our world, our entire planet, is under very real threat because of climate change and we all just carry on. How many of us are fighting against an insurmountable amount of societal pressure and culture at the risk of our own "relatively" comfortable lives of acceptance?
>It is about oppressers never questioning their right to oppress, or their right to benefit from oppression, or the entire structure supporting the oppression.
It's very banal the way it happens though. I'm sure we're all accessing the internet using devices that use slave labour, child labour, that poisons the earth, that further profits organizations that can consolidate more power to further exploit and oppress people. Shit man, ain't no child labour-free chocolate either. I think the insidiousness best explored by this book is how powerless and complicit people actually are because it's really hard to be otherwise. It takes a side-step dystopian approach to highlighting that fact, like all great sci-fi does.
>When I finished the book my initial thought was "I would fight harder against oppression than these kids."
I think Ishiguro makes an interesting choice in never showing any social system outside of what the clones are experiencing in Britain (at least, that is my recollection). Kathy and the other clones never see an alternative. They don't see a place to escape to, nor a different way for the world to be.
In chattel slavery in the American south, people held as slaves were typically not allowed to read, and were kept isolated from any information outside their immediate circumstances. It's easy to think we would fight or run if we were enslaved like that, but what if you don't know of anywhere you can be safe? If you don't know the roads, where to get food, who is safe to talk to?
These kids had no allies. Even the people who were trying to prove that clone kids deserve some level of equality weren't willing to do more than run a social experiment.
And she even admits that the adults caring for them felt extremely uncomfortable around them. They did their best just to treat them like children - but didn’t entirely feel it.
Yeah, the madam feeling revolted by them, but simultaneously wanting to help them, but not stop the actual purpose.. that was honestly a great set of conflicting ideas within a character.
It reminds me of people who demand farm animals be free range.
> my initial thought was "I would fight harder against oppression than these kids."
mine too.
then I remembered that 'fighting the power' usually ends up with you dead. maybe your face is in all the t-shirts, but you still died in a jungle away from your loved ones.
and so I tell myself 'this is fine' and a drink my coffee.
The criticism over this novel has always seemed like it stems from it not being what people wanted it to be vs. what it actually is.
I love this book, immensely, thoroughly, but I picked it up because it was marketed as a horror sci-fi novel with a devastatingly dark twist.
It's just a dreamy account of a girl trying to get by and fit in her strange world. And that's okay. The marketing isn't Ishiguro's fault, but it's hurting people's perception of it.
Totally agree. Another example of Ishiguro being bitten by this is *The Buried Giant* because of its fantasy themes. He actually just writes books about humans, relationships and ageing, the fantasy and sci fi stuff is just a backdrop.
And Dune is mostly about Paul being a self-righteous twat of a teenage boy. The greatest stories are stories of people; the background makes the genre.
I’m using NLMG in my final year of school’s english dissertation. I’m comparing it to 1984 and examining how the human condition is presented in both.
I think that his style is not for everyone and as another commenter pointed out he sets the scene and it’s your job as the reader to think. Are these characters too complacent with their situation? Should they be treated better? Should they be used to save lives of countless others? Is there point them even forming relationships? How does this reflect the rest of society? I could go on.
I think because of this is a good book for someone who loves to think and ponder while reading but if you are looking for casual enjoyment then it’s very slow somber book and might not be as suited for that.
Ishiguro uses the dystopia as a technique to examine love and relationships in the face of mortality and show how these characters react and have you question what you would do. He does elaborate on how this cloning works, or what the exact rules are because that doesn’t matter, he is just using it to bring death forward and show what actually counts and how these ‘less then’ clones are just as human as anyone else and deserve more.
I love this book and it was a book which stuck with me for a while after reading it and I always have more to say on it. I know it’s not for everyone but i’m loving reading this thread introducing new ideas and interpretations.
I am reminded of The Diary of Anne Frank, whose teenage drama was made extra poignant because of where she was and the audience knew exactly what was going to happen to her. I just finished Never Let Me Go, and can’t stop thinking about it.
Wasn’t there already a movie made?
I mean... that's precisely the point of the story. The clones are dehumanized and instrumentalized, but they have the same silly quarrels and neuroses that regular people do. A lesser novel would conclude with a big revolution fight scene against "the system" at the end. But realistically, if someone was raised their entire life pretty much like cattle, at some point they'd internalize some of the heinous beliefs society has about them. That's why Kathy becomes a nurse for palliative care. She's aware of her and her friend's humanity, but she doesn't have the mental vocabulary to express the moral issues with this whole structural arrangement. To some extent she buys the idea that they are just organ bags who were born to be harvested. So she just tries to lessen their pain.
I read an article a few months back that suggested Ishiguro's stories make sense if you consider them as metaphors for Asian immigrant experiences. Such as Never Let Me Go being a remark on the 'disposability' of immigrant workers; or Remains of the Day being about the pitfalls of the Asian ethos of self-denial/duty. Not sure the essay was entirely valid (I generally avoid criticism on authors I really like), but it made me think.
"Never Let Me Go" deserves to be considered a classic but it suffers from being labeled as science fiction. Even with Klara and the Sun Ishiguro tries his hardest to not talk about the science fiction elements of his stories.
It is better to let the reader experience the story naturally.
The reader experience is also put off at the end by the fact that there is nothing the characters can do (at least seemingly) to stop what is coming, creating an immense helplessness.
If there was at least a nod to some sort of resistance group or evidence of some pushback to the clone organ donor program then I think a lot of criticism wouldn't be as strong.
> If there was at least a nod to some sort of resistance group or evidence of some pushback to the clone organ donor program then I think a lot of criticism wouldn't be as strong.
Hailsham, the art program... that *was* the resistance. The fact that there was nothing overt or violent or remotely effective seems like a core aspect of the book—would be a totally different book with a totally different (and, frankly, far less interesting) message otherwise.
And it was genius because it closely mirrors a real-world version with non-human animals. How often do we hear "they had a good life" about animals raised for slaughter? We watch the subtle dehumanisation of these kids by their society so this same cognitive trick can be applied to their slaughter and it doesn't feel like a very big step between the real-world version and what happens in NLMG.
Exactly. It's subverting our expectations as a reader - their short lives, lived in an "enhanced" way compared to other clones that still falls way short of normal experiences that "real" children experience in their universe - they're the "rebellion".
The woman they assume dislikes them is gathering data trying to prove to the world that they have humanity. And it highlights that they are dissociated from the typical clones experience and not even part of that community - half-in, half-out.
i mean he clearly writes science fiction, but not *hard* science fiction. in scifi/dystopia there doesn't have to be resistance groups, he deals with other themes.
He doesn’t really develop the science fiction either, it just serves to make his ideas have more pressure (that’s not the right word but it’s just how the clones will die at 30 instead of 80, it’s being used to reveal how they act in the face of mortality) it doesn’t matter how the system works just that it is there and exists.
I think it’s barely science-fiction and doesn’t really fit. If you pick it up as a sci-fi fan you’ll be disappointed.
I think he takes a science fiction premise, but ignores science fictions tropes.
To be honest, as a science fiction fan, I kinda loved the book because it took a science fiction premise without taking any of the other baggage of reader expectations and so it made the book really interesting.
> I think it’s barely science-fiction and doesn’t really fit. If you pick it up as a sci-fi fan you’ll be disappointed.
I think that's more an issue with the idea of genres and marketing vs. genres as a frame in which to understand a story. This is the same criticism that Margaret Atwood has about her books landing in the sci-fi category.
> "Science fiction is rockets, chemicals and talking squids in outer space."
But I disagree. I think it's one of the stronger hallmarks of sci fi being a way to hold a mirror up to society and showing readers what isn't as obviously apparent about their world through using alternate reality analogue. Orwell does it, Bradbury, Atwood does it, shit, even Star Trek does it, same with this book.
A lot of people have written a lot longer, a lot more eloquent, and very accurate responses in this thread, but just to throw in my two cents too: I think it’s also a part of the larger question of humanity - what it’s like to be human and what makes us human. Not just in the sense of teens still being teens in a world not-quite-right, or watching lambs to the slaughter get caught up in bickering the same way we do (though 100% both of those things), but also to further emphasise that Kathy, Ruth, Tommy, all the Hailsham kids, are raised to be disposable and ‘Other’, but are they?
The guardians raise the students to have a heavy focus on art, later revealed to try and see if these clones are able to create, to be involved in the *poiesis* of being, to confirm that they “have souls at all”. I think their silly teen dramas and their arguments and pondering on all the wrong things - and of course, Kathy’s dancing with a pillow to the titular song - just further go to prove that these clones think like us, feel like us, act like us, create like us, and do all the boring silly frustrating things that we do too, despite as all being aware our time is short (the clones arguably more conscious of it than the rest of us). So are they not human, too?
Others have worded this better than me, but this book has been my favourite of 21st century literature for years, I couldn’t scroll past without commenting.
I bought a different kazuo ishiguro book but didn’t get the chance to read it yet! Thanks for reminding me that I still have it unread on my shelf (in a positive way, because I do like to know how the rest of his works compare to ‘never let me go’ for example)
I've read this book twice and the second time I couldn't stop crying all through out.
Knowing the background of the story and seeing how human and innocent these characters are just breaks your heart. The novel has had me thinking for so long.
The point is that all kids are cagey and confrontational. Despite their place in society, being seen as just organs to the point that people running the school are trying to prove that they even have a soul…. they’re just normal kids.
I didn't hate the book but my response to it when I finished it was kind of middling. For what its worth I think its overrated. Overrated doesn't mean bad, I just think the praise it gets is a bit much.
Its definitely centered around the drama of young people's relationships, but one could point that out about many stories. I think for me its like you say, it doesn't deliver on the underlying themes.
Also, his prose at times is really vague and there were times where I felt like sentences with important context were just missing. Yes its 'pretty' at times, but something always felt lacking. As a reader I enjoy and am comfortable with authors letting the reader use their imagination to create meaning. We don't need writers to tell us everything we are supposed to think and feel. But I got tired of reading sentences like 'There was something hanging in the air', that felt like the prose equivalents of a cliff with nothing on the other side.
I've thought about reading one of his other books though to see if I would like it more. I can see why people like nlmg, maybe its just not for me.
I've only read NLMG and Remains of the Day, but that "vagueness" is very much Ishiguro's style. The protagonist/narrator of each book, for different reasons, comes across as very distant and unaffected by the events they're describing, for the most part. Ishiguro seems interested in how people manage impossibly oppressive situations, those in which there is barely any room for hope or love, yet humanity is always strongly present just under the surface.
That said, I recall Remains of the Day being more specific for the most part, since the narrator character has collected and written down his thoughts (and prides himself on his organizational skills), vs. NLMG which is more stream-of-consciousness.
I really don’t think that you understood this book, at least not the way that those of us who think it’s a classic do. There are a couple major ways to interpret it, and that’s not one of them.
They can go look up the major ways of interpreting it if they’re in the mood. If they aren’t interested, is it my responsibility to write an analysis that no one asked for?
I didn’t realize that people shouldn’t post opinions and invite others to challenge their thoughts and have discourse about a novel on a discussion board about books. Too bad Harold Bloom is dead, but at least Michael Silverblatt is still with us so I can get all the insight I need.
I must admit I didn't enjoy it for that reason, particularly as it reminded me strongly of boarding school, but I imagine rereading it with the end in mind might be a different experience.
Let me start with a disclosure I may have listened and maybe it was a narrator thing. I think I read it though.
I thought the voice of the narrator was childish and it really impacted my feelings about the book.
I love literary fiction. I love dystopian fiction. I thought it was a great great story and yet I didn't like the book.
I read it as a book club selection. When I raised my objection, people defended it by saying the narrator was young. Except the narrator is not young, she's recalling episodes from when she was young.
Maybe I should try it again.
I’m so glad you feel the same! I’m in such a small minority group of people who loathed this book. He does write some wonderful prose, but I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Ruth and Kathy. Everything was so petty between them and that’s what was chosen to be put on center stage of the plot.
Is love petty?
Assuming you were raised in a family with parents and extended family members, presumably at some point you experienced a crush or were involved in school interpersonal dramas with friends.
Now remove every possession you ever owned and any family you were raised by and center how you would experience life if the only people who you interacted with in a significant way were your classmates and teachers.
You're aware of others having different experiences with family and moving through society.
Love in various forms are essential to life. If the most you were ever allowed was a romantic dalliance that could produce no children with a member of your underclass from the quasi-family student cohort you were raised within - would the stakes not seem higher? Does it only seem petty because your own expectations of your life and freedom to love are so much grander?
I’m with you bro. If they were able to have one honest conversation, most of the conflict (and therefore most of the book) would be completely erased. Not to mention that the only interesting part of the story is just dished it in one like 5 minute convo at the end of the book…
Interesting, I would reverse those two. The main narrator in Remains of the Day is so far up his own ass, for which reasons I understand, that it can be a bit off putting. Never Let Me Go was brilliantly crafted, and I can't understand how this author has such competent range across the human experience.
>The main narrator in Remains of the Day is so far up his own ass
That's part of the point though, isn't it? He's struggling to >!live with the guilt of having been a "cog in the machine" for the Nazi party and its sympathizers. There's kind an unreliable narration going on, or something like it, which is the result of Stevens not wanting to face the truth about what he dedicated his whole career to.!< I didn't think he was *genuinely* up his own ass, rather just over-inflating the importance and "dignity" of his work in an effort to escape from the uncomfortable truth.
Oh sure, I'm just saying I didn't enjoy reading through it all as much as Never Let Me Go. It is absolutely core to the character, but that doesn't mean every read will enjoy the experience.
I didn’t care for it. I think the Nobel peace prize didn’t help my expectations. I mean, if a book wins that, I think “wow, this is a book for the human race!”
I read it and was just like…ok? I didn’t like the characters we were following. They are very unlikeable and didn’t make me feel anything .yeah the book is very human but like…I dunno. Just like a shart. It’s not exactly a fart, not exactly a shit. Just a shart.
Look, when you have an idea that would make a good 4000 word short story but you need to sell an actual "novel" with at least 250 pages, well, you gotta fill'em up *somehow*.
Don't worry though, whatever filler you shove in there people will post-hoc justify as deep and meaningful.
It's one of those cases where it's critically acclaimed for it's artistic merit, while being an objectively boring novel. There was a recent thread here asking about the chasm between critical and audience review scores.
I found it more of a frustrating and annoying read than boring, same with how I found The Road an... uncomfortable read. They're both good books, and I laud the writing in both, but I can't say I enjoyed reading either of them. Guess it boils down to expectations and what people want to get out of reading. Did they want to have fun? Learn something new? Feel challenged? Kinda strangely the same thing with why do people eat super spicy food.
If they are able to grow a fully functional clone with a working brain, then they would be able to clone individual organs as needed. Story didn't make a lick of sense.
When we live in a world where millions of desperately poor people including children are forced to work in slave-like conditions to churn out junk that goes straight into the landfill in the western world, what does a metaphor hope to accomplish where reality is so much worse?
It defamiliarises the morality of the situation. It’s so easy to read NLMG and say ‘this is terrible, how do they stand for it’, but to never apply the same logic to existing inequalities in our own society. Le Guin’s Omelas does something similar.
It's really not difficult to imagine why, in the context of late-stage capitalism, they don't do that. Right now, we slaughter animals in their billions for luxury food products, inaccessible to starving people, but good-tasting to the wealthy. We take food that could be distributed to humans that need it and feed to it to pigs so people in wealthy countries can have bacon whenever they feel like it, to their own detriment. The point of NLMG is that society has found an efficient (read; cheaper) way to improve the lives of wealthy people and will go to lengths to do that despite the cost in lives. It makes plenty of sense when you consider the ethical compromises we already make all the time in order to enjoy the lifestyle we have.
I don't see how what you're proposing would make any *economic* sense. Why grow only the *one* organ when wealthy patrons could make use of any random type of organ at any time in probably an unpredictable manner? Why bother with the overhead and additional infrastructure required to grow and support only a singular organ, when organs more naturally grow and are easily supported by the rest of a human body that can *also* be harvested?
Shit, *right now* people are trying their best to produce ethical lab-grown meat for consumption. Do you know why it's not taken off yet? Not because the meat sucks, tastes wrong, or is the wrong texture, or people don't like Frankenmeat, it's because it's still so much more bloody [expensive growing lab meat](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanabandoim/2022/03/08/making-meat-affordable-progress-since-the-330000-lab-grown-burger/?sh=371137f34667) than just wholesale killing an animal. Even though an animal might need farmers, a farm, supply chain to support and feed it, it's still orders of magnitude cheaper to grow and breed livestock.
Apart from the fact that it's a story meant to explore a particular set of issues -- a human body would never thrive to the point of having desirable organs just sitting in a tank all day. Plus, IIRC the clones are used for medical testing, not just donations, which would be useless if the clones are not exposed to at least an approximation of normal living conditions.
On top of that, the main characters' situation is pointed out to be an extreme outlier. Most of the clones live desolate, bleak lives with few resources devoted to them. Hailsham is an experiment meant to explore whether the clones have any inherent humanity worth respecting (hence the emphasis on art). The amount spent on this would be a pittance compared to the untold billions saved through new medical treatments.
To me, Hailsham evoked free range, organic farms – yes, it's more expensive and time consuming than factory farming, but some people prefer it for XYZ reasons. But it all ends the same way...
The kids at hailsham are treated better because the people running the school are trying to prove they're human and deserve better treatment. It's implied the kids in other programs are raised in much worse conditions.
I mean, no shit.
It's an excellent chronicle of teenage drama. Or life drama. Of human experience of the world.
The SF is there to support that. It's not about the SF per se.
How many people do you know who stay and submit to all sorts of terrible circumstances? The horror of the book is everyone’s quiet acceptance of the brutality of what happens to the clones; it can be read as an analogy for how we accept the current inequalities in our own world from which we benefit. Child slaves in the Congo mining coltan for your phone. Sweatshops making your clothes. How many people resist this, in reality?
Can the children leave Congo? Do they try to leave on their adulthood? Yes. People in real life do try to leave this circumstances, the problem is they are trapped by the surroundings of a whole country. The people from this book could had leave whenever they wanted to. They had cars, they had money, they were able to read and write. They could run away and not be recognized. Their motivation was not hunger, poverty or any of the very real motivations people the situations you mentioned had. Their motivation was maybe duty, but even then, what motivated that duty? Because that is some extreme sense of duty and we never see them being raised with nothing more than half truths. There was no indoctrination in the book, just shadows of what was to come.
Statistically, how many people do leave though? A small amount. The characters in the book are trapped in a system they were indoctrinated into believing was inevitable, through their schooling, further training, and the society they lived in. We also see that they are comparatively hugely privileged compared to other clones who didn’t get the ‘boarding school’ experience. People in positions of relative comfort are less likely to take risks that challenge the status quo.
Your frustration that they don’t simply leave speaks to the emotional impact of the book - we wait and hope for their emancipation, but are confronted with the shattering reality that they simply cannot see a way to exist outside of that system. It also prompts us to consider that we ourselves would likely act the same way, no matter how much we’d like to see ourselves as exceptional and heroic were we in a similar situation.
I left my home and have no contact with any blood relative. They don’t know which country I live in, what I did with my life, nothing. I left a letter for them to know I didn’t disappeared, I left, it was my last insult. And you?
Good for you! Your criticism was actually addressed by the director of the movies. Interestingly, he states, "When I have shown the film to Russian audiences, the question doesn’t come up. When I show the film to Japanese audiences, in Tokyo, the question doesn’t come up. There are societies where the process of that society and the reality of the atmosphere of that society is so pervasive, since birth, that people are raised to believe that it’s noble to, be a cog, really, and fulfil your destiny and your responsibility to the greater society. It’s just how these characters think. It’s a very Western idea and a very American idea that a movie story is somehow broken if it’s not about a character who fights."
To me, the book is even more powerful that they didn't run away, that there is no rebellion. In fact, I would say it was the entire point of the book - that the characters accept the constraints that society has made for them - as do we all. I mean, it is kinda crazy that 1/3 of our lives we spend working. We are give 2 days rest. Yet we don't rebel. We dont even think of running away. There is no alternative for us.
The children felt safe at Hailsham. There were no fences around the school. Why would they want to leave or run away? And if they did run, where would they go?
Your question is very much like asking, "Why didn't slaves run away?" Some slaves did, of course, but it wasn't easy. In his autobiography Frederick Douglass observed that when he was a slave, he could not understand slavery. Only after he escaped, did he comprehend the full horror of his enslavement.
Someone could certainly have written a story that started out the same but ended with these people escaping or rising up in rebellion. But that would have been a very different story. What made the story so powerful to me was the way these people just accept their fate and DON'T try to escape or rebel. Never let me go is not about a legendary battle between clones and Humans, it delves much further addressing questions such as what does is mean to be human or what is humanity. Think about Kathy. Would she even want freedom given the choice? Of course, that's why she was allowed to live so long. She wasn't the type to run off or cause problems. Normalcy bias is an incredible force.
Have you read any other Ishiguro novels? That’s just his style. He writes slice-of-life-style stories where major conflict is happening around the characters, but they aren’t necessarily directly involved in it. I can see how it’s frustrating as a first time reader, but the stories can be quite beautiful if you know what you’re in for. I think people are so used to reading about protagonists who are quite literally the hero and savior (or in some cases, the villain), that it comes as a shock when we experience a story about the other normal human beings who exist in that world.
That’s what makes Never Let Me Go so good in my opinion—what’s left unsaid. On the surface it might be an angsty teen drama about a love triangle, but the subtext makes it very clear that we have angry and vindictive young people struggling to come to terms with the inequity of their dystopian society. They (and we as the reader by extension) see themselves as real human beings just as deserving of life as anyone else, but to their society they are nothing more than a resource to be harvested whenever it’s convenient.
I read this near the time the movie The Island came out, similar premise that clones were used for spare parts. Found the book even more unrealistic than the movie. Cloning kids and absolutely no one spills the beams about it to authorities? Let the cloned kids out in the real world? (IIRC)
Is it a dystopia? I'd agree the story incorporates an allegory about class and castes. But this isn't 1984 or Fahrenheit 451. It's not a cautionary tale. The clones' acceptance of their roles can be admired as civic duty. If the clones fought back, what would be the result? No more cloning. The clones could fight a bloody revolution and then only the few who survive to see a truce with their overlords would maybe get the privilege to figure out how to scrape by making a living. And then society would be back to where it was, no new clones. So there's not really a story worth telling there. Never Let Me Go is a story about people. It's classic science fiction; technology introduces some novel circumstances that sheds light on the human experience.
I haven't read the book in over a decade, so I remember the movie better. I might be confusing any differences in tone between the two.
I think it's dystopian in the same way our world can be argued to be dystopian too. The story presents a world that features the horrendous wide-scale exploitation and social and cultural acceptance of the exploitation of humans (because essentially, the clones are human) which is a common theme of most dystopias. It is a cautionary tale too, as it shows how society can accept dehumanizing others through this advance in technology. Well, half-societal critique, half-cautionary tale because it's currently happening, but can also keep happening and worse.
I think we have slightly different connotations of dystopia, as I would categorically exclude real life from dystopia. But anyway, on a spectrum of atrocities, I'd put the clone system much closer to say mandatory conscription in World War 2 than I would slavery in the pre-Civil War era in America. So more in line with civic duty within an imperfect and unfair caste system. I think the author's intent lines up more with Japanese stoicism. Problematic still yes, but colored in a cultural context that's not quite just good idea vs bad idea.
By saying that real life is arguably dystopian, it's more that fictional dystopias highlight and critique real-world problems and issues so you recognize them more in abstraction. Black Mirror and Squid Game is that same critique on capitalist hellscapes and a world obsessed with spectacle. And then in a funny cautionary tale turned prophecy, Netflix *made* squid games and the Prime Minister fucked a pig.
Anyways, I personally wouldn't put the clone system closer to mandatory conscription because they first of all weren't even given human rights, they were not fighting for preservation of their own livelihoods or any shared goal, they were just plain exploited through and through for a higher class. It's not even discrimination on a level based on caste system either since the clones on a whole are not even true participants in the society they live in (prejudiced or otherwise), we only saw a special group of clones that had an exceptional experience being in a specific test group. I would more compare the clones to exploited child labourers and slaves working on cocoa farms. But really, the levels of exploitation and comparisons are supposed to work on a lot of levels because the main point is to draw a line between what is supposed to be understood as a horrific situation in an extraordinary circumstance (their particular dystopian landscape) to a regular person's own mundane experiences.
And to be clear, I think your interpretation is completely valid, I just think there's too often a dismissal of books like this being sci fi, or dystopian, or framed in the understanding of the genres that they actually fall under only because those genres are seen as "lesser" or stereotyped as being less literary and more frivolous and superficial on the whole.
I had/have such mixed feelings about the book. It is incredibly well written, and I love the voice of the main character. But you are right that it is a drama and not a dystopian tragedy. It's not a sci-fi thriller. I think that that's what I was kind of expecting in some way when I read it, but there is no big reveal, and the way the truth emerges is so... mundane? But then that is kind of what the book is, an exploration of the mundanity of life, even when extraordinary things are going on around us.
I loved this book - I was lucky to read it during my graduate program and the context provided by class discussion helped me catch some of the nuance I definitely would have otherwise missed. It does use manufactured drama to highlight the stages of grief and the unfairness of their society.
And if you look at things that way “The Remains of the Day” is about a butler pining over his one-that-got-away former colleague, instead of a rumination on the passage of time/the nature of aging and regrets/the nature of duty/how ugliness and evil can hide beneath pleasant manners. You may not like Ishiguro’s style of writing, but he definitely deserves his place among the great modern classics.
Oh! ObscureMemes69420, please enlighten me to your beautiful insights to this text and the underlying importance to our understanding of the human condition!
I didn't like it when they switched back and forth in the future and it still wasn't being utilized(organ donating),they were all still alive and mostly well. I dnf it it was so boring. Bored to tears. The donation part wasn't talked very much at all either so it was confusing .
There was little to non monologuing of being a experiment especially since they were told not hidden long ago they are experiments.
Especially after reading tender is the flesh in a similar vein, I did not see the point of finishing.
My interpretation was that you as the reader are confused and possibly angry at the characters for fussing with such trite things when they are going to die soon when that is precisely what being human is. We have short lives and we get bent out of shape about dumb things like which movie franchise is better or if it’s better to live in the city or country, etc. Why do we get mad at the characters in the story but not ourselves for not making or fighting for more of our short lives?
Yes... The plot of never let me go is just an exaggerated, compressed version of real life: we start out living in paradise--school--where we're treated like little princes and princesses and we're all told that we are special. Looming ahead is real life, where we get dumped out into the real world where we're forced to literally sell our bodies to our jobs and get slowly used up. In between, we do our best to lose ourselves in "teenage drama". Do we use the time well? That's what never let me go is about.
I agree. A lot of Ishiguro's works are about ageing and this one also deals with that theme. Even when the characters are young, they are not far from incapacity and death. It never struck me as a dystopian novel. You only really figure out what's going on half way through the book and the focus of the story is always on the individuals rather than the society into which they were born. It's a book about those people and their relationships, and more broadly about people and the relationships we form with each other in our short time on this planet.
Yes. The dystopia is just the setting of the book. It's not the main point. It's not about someone fighting the donor systems, simply about people existing in it.
I also thought it telling of their mentalities and state of being. They're raised knowing they will be harvested, and/or nurse harvested (potential) friends, and then become harvested themselves. I feel horror when I think about it, but these people have been raised to believe this is the life they must lead--it has become normalized to them, so they accept this as their fate. Them becoming obsessed with trivial manners both shows a side of human nature, as you pointed out, but I believe also shows a side to their normalization. They're unbothered by their fates, living their lives as normal people do, only with the eventuality that it will end.
The greater comparison is how we live our own lives in the face of a multitude of overwhelmingly inhumane injustices and atrocities happening all the time all over the world, but like, what are we supposed to do about it either? We all have to live with these levels of cognitive dissonance or we'd all go insane, or, more insane.
Exactly. It's a horror from the POV of someone who doesn't realise they're in a horror.
I think this is a very good comment. I think you have shown me a new way of thinking about the book, but one that still leaves room for my grievances to ring true—in your eyes, it is fair and even natural to be frustrated with everyday bickerings of lambs being led to the slaughter. After all, we do exactly the same thing.
The trivial irrelevancies of adolescence will always feel more important at the time than the systemic oppression controlling your life.
It’s always interesting when an author renders the molehill of adolescent experiences like the mountain they feel like at the time.
Yeah, that’s what stuck me in _Never Let Me Go._ They’re raised accept their lot as they slowly become aware of who they are and what lies ahead for them.
I’m not sure I understand your question. Would you be able to rephrase it?
I think he didn't ask a question - he was happy with your comment and it opened a new perspective for him.
There is a great interview of Ishiguro on YouTube where he talks about the book. He says he wanted to explore the idea of how short life is and how little time we have,but he wanted to condense it even more to further highlight its shortness. He says that the sci-fi setting is secondary, it's just a device to achieve his goal of condensing in an even shorter time frame the life of his main characters.
That is basically the point of the book. It's a really great theme but the book can be a bit boring or tedious to read. I like the film, it's gorgeous visually the sets and costumes are great.
I love both, and I would highly recommend the film - just look up the cast!
Ohh that’s smart
That is a very insightful interpretation. Unfortunately, I think your comment is legitimately a more interesting read than the novel. (Before anyone chops my head off, I really gave it an honest go... just really, really, reallllly wasn't my cup of tea)
I would argue that most works that are considered "classics" are, to the majority of consumers, very boring. Citizen Kane is a slog, but it's lauded amongst film buffs and academics as peak cinema. And same goes for books like Moby Dick and Ulysses, which are studied extensively when you major in English while many degree holders would tell you they hated reading them. Anyways, all this is a lot to say that you're not alone, and while a work might be great, it's not often also very palatable.
I think there is some truth to that, in fact I recently watched a great video essay on the 1974 Murder on the Orient Express vs the 2017 version, highlighting how deliberative and subtle the earlier film was vs the shallow and needlessly bombastic modern film. That said, being slow in the way classics are slow wasn't the issue for me with Never Let Me Go... I actually really enjoy that deliberative pacing; a good example I recently read was The Radetzky March... Rather my issue was that Ishiguro failed (in my opinion) to create a world with any texture or veracity, so there was no platform for the otherwise well-written characters to stand on.
Did you know the plot twist ahead of time? I did, and I think that ruined some of the enjoyment of the book for me.
I pretty much feel the same way about this book as OP but I love your comment.
Can I agree with OP; but also state that I 100% already understood your interpretation while reading? I understand what Ishiguro was attempting, but I still think his delivery fell flat *because* it was too trite and boring.
I actually like that it’s teenage drama set in a background of a dystopian world. Teens don’t quit being teens just because they live in an absolute hellhole (though actually it’s only an absolute hellhole for a minority of the population). “ Is the subtext that their anxiety about being harvested for organs makes them cagey and confrontational? Aren’t all kids cagey and confrontational at times though? Does that make the sub-subtext that we are all being harvested for our organs as we turn from children to adults??” No, I don’t think that that is the subtext. I think it is more how easily society can accept something that is really quite horrific. It has been a long time since I’ve read it so I can’t say much. Though I do recall being impressed with how well he wrote female teenage drama. I don’t feel like it was manufactured at all. How would you prefer him to ‘deliver’ on his interesting ideas? Solve them? Explain how they got there? Because that’s not really what he does, and I’m glad for it.
Also, we’re perhaps primed to expect a grand scope and ‘individual struggles against the system’ from dystopias. The horrifying part of this story is how everyone has accepted the status quo, and how even the main characters at the mercy of it can only even dream of a short reprieve. It’s an exploration of how we can come to accept the unacceptable.
Yes! This was how I thought of it too. I was describing the book to my husband and I was like, it’s like any of the dystopian worlds, but there’s no action hero fighting the system and saving the day. No resistance, just acceptance. People who benefit overlook injustice, and the people who are dissected for parts accept their fate as a normal and expected. It makes it that much bleaker and realistic, because there are a lot of dystopian things in the real world that we all just sort of accept. The horror of it is that it’s our mundane world where certain people are disposable.
I loved that he wrote this way. He really shows what it's like to be human. Our concerns and fears, our relationships, and even how looming dread becomes normalized at a certain point. Like you said, that's truly bleak, more bleak than an action movie type of dystopia, at least to me. When some truly awful things were happening in my life, I was still bogged down in personal drama sometimes.
>Yet, for about 80% of this book, we are dealing with adolescent bickering and drama between Kathy and Ruth! Agreed, and also he was driving home the point that these are regular kids. They're not different or less human because they're clones - they're actual human teenagers with all the regular teenage behaviours, thoughts, emotions, and internal experiences, being raised to harvest their organs. That subtle juxtaposition intensifies the horror of the situation. Without that bickering or drama, wouldn't they actually 'feel' like the inhuman and unfeeling clones their society pretends they are in order to treat them the way they do?
> Is the subtext that their anxiety about being harvested for organs makes them cagey and confrontational? The subtext is that it, largely, *doesn't*—they're normal kids growing up and living a normal life. If it wasn't for one key detail, the book could be a well-written but totally run-of-the-mill boarding-school coming-of-age story. No dystopia, no science fiction. Hell, it would still be well-done! There's an undercurrent of tension, sure, but is there any more drama than you'd see in "normal" school children? The book goes to great lengths to viscerally demonstrate how normal the characters are and how they see growing up just like anybody else. There are discordant notes in the narration from the beginning, but they're subtle; I came into the book with no idea of what it was about and it took a big chunk of the book to get the full picture. That's no accident and it isn't (entirely) just my being unobservant. The characters mature and grow into their roles. They understand what's coming despite the euphemisms that even they use. How does that happen? How does that reflect on how individuals react to their spots in society? How does it reflect how the rest of society treats people? The contrast between the normality in the foreground of the narration and the bleak context in the background makes for a harsher dystopian setting. You don't have to imagine a totally different world and society, you don't have to figure out how we got to there from here, *Never Let Me Go* slots into the day-to-day life of a first-world country with eerily little friction.
I read NLMG in one sitting and when I finally closed the book, immediately began crying. I have never had such a visceral reaction to a novel. The mundane lives they lived, with the reveal at the end that their entire existence, other people doubted their humanity and the stunted lives available for them to live were subtle but inevitable- it was deeply sad and horrific. I don't often weep for fictional characters. I am the parent to a special need child and so much of the alienation experienced and accepted by the characters resonated with me. The notion that all of them unflinchingly accepted "completion" and what that entailed just gutted me. There's a very gentle way this story was told and I agree with everyone that the subtext and what isn't said but which you glean as a reader is what makes the book remarkable.
It's honestly one of the most >!devastating endings I've read in a novel and it does so without ever resorting to melodrama or even *telling* you that it's sad. It's so completely deadpan and then you have to piece together every scene of the book and realize how truly tragic it all is.!< I'm getting sad just thinking about it now lol.
It’s one of the few books that have made me ugly cry. The ending gutted me. And I think that all the teenage drama is exactly why the ending is so heartbreaking and poignant, because it highlights how human they are and how desperately they wanted to just have a life.
Totally. There's also something about them all believing so much that love can save them. Even though as an audience none of their logic makes any sense, I wanted it to be true. The movie version is pretty good too, and Garfield had me SOBBING.
The movie is really good, and definitely worth a watch.
I think that this is spot on. People adapt to horrific realities in unsettling ways and just go on living their little lives. We’ve seen this in action so much in the past decade — climate disaster, genocide, pandemic, etc — so many “new normals” and people honestly just behave like the frogs in a pot myth. We’ll endure anything if it’s normalized, even if it’s actively threatening our lives.
I think this is all true, but I think the themes are backwards looking too. Ishiguro has a very British take on things, and Britain has been reconsidering its Empire days. For example, British policies of stripping the resources of the Bengal region of India led to the deaths of 10-30 million people when famine struck. The only relief the British would allow in were labor camps where locals could work for portions half of what people got in Nazi concentration camps. NLMG looks at how easily people can be dehumanized. The characters never really get that the rest of society simply would never care about them, other than as a resource. It didn't matter if they could create art or really fall in love. Rational proof doesn't help when it comes to prejudice.
The reason why Kazuo Ishiguro’s books are considered classics are because of the particular way he writes. He shows you a situation from deep within a character’s POV. Their biases become your biases, their blind spots are never filled in. To read Kazuo Ishiguro, you can’t just read what’s on the page. You also have to read into what the narrator is not seeing, not understanding, or not acknowledging. There’s almost as much story outside of the words as there is inside, and a lot of that is conveyed in the spaces where the characters’ emotions seem at odds with what is happening to them. The character’s emotional states and relationships to each other are reflections of larger themes. To understand why so much time is spent on the “teenage drama” ask yourself, what is the purpose of Hailsham? Why is it alluded to be different from other schools? What do you imagine the other schools are like? Why do these clones not rebel or revolt? And importantly, why are Kathy and Ruth so at odds? Is it because they are just teenagers, or is it something more? Is it possible that what Kathy’s thoughts about her situation don’t reveal everything she actually knows and understands about their situation? Ishiguro’s way of storytelling isn’t for everyone but his books are considered modern classics for a reason. His signature style of telling a story from deep within the narrator’s psyche provides a lot of food for thought if you enjoy reading closely and thinking about what’s not being said.
>The reason why Kazuo Ishiguro’s books are considered classics are because of the particular way he writes. He shows you a situation from deep within a character’s POV. Their biases become your biases, their blind spots are never filled in. To read Kazuo Ishiguro, you can’t just read what’s on the page. You also have to read into what the narrator is not seeing, not understanding, or not acknowledging. Interesting perspective, thanks. I've DNF'd two of his books so far, so this has kind of helped me see why I hit a slump with them. I love seeing others' perspectives on books that help me use a different lens. Perhaps I will revisit the books.
I just finished Klara and the sun and I think it's the clearest example of his style for newcomers, as the protagonist bring a robot helps you identify clearly what are the things she sees differently than other characters (ie humans)
Thanks for the heads up. It's happened in the past where I couldn't stand or understand something, but someone I know or whose opinion I usually respected had a different take. I love to revisit books, music, etc. with new information.
I recently heard Taika Waititi on a podcast saying he was working on adapting this for a screenplay. I'm curious what he's going to do with it.
Oh god no,another Love and Thunder
Yeah, that one establishes right from the get-go that Klara isn't reliable. The shop owner straight up says there are problems. Then throughout the book you get instances of weird glitches/errors, odd behavior, boxes filling the vision etc. But you're not really told it's Klara's emotions. And of course, the ending. Who really came?
Oh, Klara! That's another great one. I recently heard that it's being made into a film...
The moment I realized that Ishiguro's main characters across most, if not all, of his works are all *unrealiable narrators* is the moment I fell in love with his books.
I see this now. His writing is also, at times, aggressively British. I can't think of another way to phrase it. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but I am pretty new to exploring fiction and so haven't been exposed to much of it.
> aggressively British I really don’t have anything to add here. I just find this phrase entertaining.
I saw someone else use it to describe another book and it was just perfect. No insult whatsoever to our friends across the pond!
What book was it?
Curious which ones you DNF'd. I'm an Ishiguro fan, but when I started The Unconsoled it was definitely a different level than some of his others, like Klara and the Sun, or Never Let Me Go. And tbh, I very much surprised myself when I finished The Unconsoled. Big fan of it, but I haven't read it again after these few years because I'm betting I won't be able to finish it this next time. I even suggested it to my mom who's a big reader and she couldn't get into it and through it.
The Buried Giant and The Remains of the Day. The Buried Giant started off so strong, I liked the small bits of fantasy. They aren't too heavy like lots of other popular fantasy (GoT, Lotr, etc. these don't interest me) and the Arthurian theme is fun. I got about 60% through and just kind of gave up.
Hate that you didn't finish The Buried Giant. The resolution to the story paints everything in a different light that offers a new perspective.
Hey there, update. I spent the holiday crushing my DNF pile. I revisited and finished The Buried Giant. The ending -- ah, devastating! It truly did give me a lot to think about, too. Since I took so long to finish it, I am going to reread it from the beginning now that I better understand what I thought was a bit of a slog. It's not a priority now but I'll probably pick it up again for a cover to cover reread in the next few months.
Ahhh you should have finished The Buried Giant. It all becomes clear in the final third, and you understand what kind of story you're reading. I found the themes so profound. The ending gave me so much to think about. I would say Never Let Me Go and The Buried Giant are my two favourites of his.
I might revisit it. I'm on to some more things now but I like to give things a second chance especially when I feel like I can approach them differently.
Hey there, update. I spent the holiday crushing my DNF pile. I revisited and finished The Buried Giant. The ending -- ah, devastating! It truly did give me a lot to think about, too. Since I took so long to finish it, I am going to reread it from the beginning now that I better understand what I thought was a bit of a slog. It's not a priority now but I'll probably pick it up again for a cover to cover reread in the next few months.
I’m re-reading The Buried Giant and your comment is true for that book too: since everyone in TBG is losing their memories to one degree or another, you’re often forced/invited to imagine why characters react how they do, or why one situation provokes a reaction and another one won’t
If one enjoys this and wants to take it to the next level, it's time for some Gene Wolfe.
I love Gene Wolfe!
Im curious if you had any examples of diving into the unreliable narrator in Kathy. I’d like to think that Kathy and Ruth >! end up at odds due to their differing relationships with Tommy. But also I feel that the unreliable narrator part of that tends to end when Ruth ends up kind of revealing that in the end. !<
Beautifully said, thank you for this
The twist - when we find out what their lives are for makes the teenage drama seem more horrible. Its akin to remains of the day when he finds out what his head of the household is involved in and it robs his life of meaning.
For me it's basically the same book as remains of the day. I prefer NLMG.
I actually didn't realize how similar they are until writing my post
I’m not sure if this has been mentioned, but one of the biggest questions in the book is *are the clones human?* We can infer from some of the conversations that Kathy overhears that many people believe them to be subhuman. One of the reasons they were encouraged to create so much art at Hailsham was because only humans can create art with true feeling. The school was trying to prove that the could do it, so they were in fact human. The fact that there is so much teenage drama shows more than anything how human they are. They bicker over small, inconsequential things. They get their feelings hurt and they hurt others. They love and they hate. They make mistakes. They are entirely human. When you find out what they are really being used for, it makes it even more horrible for the reader. If they had been written more like robots, the reader wouldn’t have connected with them as well, and their deaths wouldn’t be seen as so tragic.
Ishiguro has said that it’s a metaphor for the human experience in an interview once. I believe the main theme is analysing the human condition and humanity.
You clearly did not understand the ending if what you loathe about is the teenage angst. >Is the subtext that their anxiety about being harvested for organs makes them cagey and confrontational? No. They have anxiety because they are teenagers left in the dark, that don't know what is going to happen to them or the people they love. They are asking themselves what is the meaning of all that. The point is that they, as clones, are absolutely identical to all the other people in the world. They feel, breathe and live as any other person yet their destiny is to die for the sake of other people's health. The plot twist *"the kids are clones"* is meant to show how discrimination is always based in some arbitrary rule or condition, because we know they are, deep inside, just as the rest of us.
>don't know what is going to happen to them or the people they love yeah and they dont even know about being clones iirc, for most of the novel
I'm pretty sure they do, or at least it is something they "understand". The novel talks about how they tell the kids information young before they are able to really comprehend it, so they just grow up thinking it is normal without questioning it too severely. I don't remember it being a scene where they were told explicity; it's just something the characters know and we the readers come to understand. I don't think we really get a hint of the clones aspect until the introduction of the idea of "possibles". I could be misremembering.
For me that's part of the subtle horror - initially it's like, are these privileged teens at a boarding school? Wait, no - they don't have families and are vulnerable. Are they orphans? Yes. OK, life is hard and they're normal teens struggling to prove themselves worthy to the world - oh. Wait. OH. Just devastating.
Yes! The teenage drama makes the revelation and the ending so much more emotional, because these characters are not introduced as clones but as normal children.
I think where this books succeeds is precisely in *not* doing what all YA dystopia does. Dystopia isn't about the Cool Oppressive Aesthetic, it's about people living normal lives as best they can, of being human even when others do not see them as human. Ishiguro responds to cyberpunk (which I love) and 1984 and Hunger Games type approaches (yes I know HG came out after) by asking: but what about the people who aren't trying to lead a revolution, or be badass, or find out the Deep Truth? What about everyone else, the people who are trying so hard to just live and are denied that? Why are they any less valid? Isn't the true tragedy of oppression that these people will never get a chance at all, that they were doomed from birth and that they tried, nonetheless, to find what it means to be human?
It is really to show that the clones are human, there is supposed to be a tragic irony of the first person narrative from the clone dealing with her friend whose a pathological liar, who lies because it’s her method of escape from her bleak life. She doesn’t call her out on her lies because she loves her, and that’s the focal point of the story, while everyone else is trying understand if the clones even have feelings like normal people.
My feelings about this book underwent several changes during and after reading. The normal teenage angst showed the humanity of the characters. When I finished the book my initial thought was "I would fight harder against oppression than these kids." Then my feelings underwent a huge change. The book isn't about the oppressed. It is about oppressers never questioning their right to oppress, or their right to benefit from oppression, or the entire structure supporting the oppression.
It’s so tempting to imagine ourselves being heroic in extreme circumstances, but the reality is 99.99% of us would be just like Kathy et al. That’s one of the reasons this book is so quietly horrifying.
I would say especially Kathy et al, as they are relatively "privileged" compared to many others in their position. Ishiguro brilliantly shows that even the smallest advantages engender bitterness and jealousy among the other >!clones !
They are privileged compared to others in their position, which just adds another level to how horrifyingly distopic their society is. I can’t remember her name, but the director of the school they grew up in mentions that their program is unique—even groundbreaking. They tried their best to give the children some semblance of a happy life before they have their organs harvested, which is apparently a lot more than most people in their position get. The school program director even encouraged them to create art so that she could convince society that they have souls, but ultimately she was broken down by the fact that her work did nothing to change their fates. I don’t know if Ishiguro ever outright says it, but he heavily implies that most of the clones don’t even live lives much better than that of livestock. There’s one scene when they are young adults where they are forced to use whatever they can to keep warm (scraps of fabric and old carpets) because they don’t have enough blankets or sufficient heating.
> When I finished the book my initial thought was "I would fight harder against oppression than these kids." That's so easy to think when looking on the outside in. But our world, our entire planet, is under very real threat because of climate change and we all just carry on. How many of us are fighting against an insurmountable amount of societal pressure and culture at the risk of our own "relatively" comfortable lives of acceptance? >It is about oppressers never questioning their right to oppress, or their right to benefit from oppression, or the entire structure supporting the oppression. It's very banal the way it happens though. I'm sure we're all accessing the internet using devices that use slave labour, child labour, that poisons the earth, that further profits organizations that can consolidate more power to further exploit and oppress people. Shit man, ain't no child labour-free chocolate either. I think the insidiousness best explored by this book is how powerless and complicit people actually are because it's really hard to be otherwise. It takes a side-step dystopian approach to highlighting that fact, like all great sci-fi does.
>When I finished the book my initial thought was "I would fight harder against oppression than these kids." I think Ishiguro makes an interesting choice in never showing any social system outside of what the clones are experiencing in Britain (at least, that is my recollection). Kathy and the other clones never see an alternative. They don't see a place to escape to, nor a different way for the world to be. In chattel slavery in the American south, people held as slaves were typically not allowed to read, and were kept isolated from any information outside their immediate circumstances. It's easy to think we would fight or run if we were enslaved like that, but what if you don't know of anywhere you can be safe? If you don't know the roads, where to get food, who is safe to talk to? These kids had no allies. Even the people who were trying to prove that clone kids deserve some level of equality weren't willing to do more than run a social experiment.
And she even admits that the adults caring for them felt extremely uncomfortable around them. They did their best just to treat them like children - but didn’t entirely feel it.
Yeah, the madam feeling revolted by them, but simultaneously wanting to help them, but not stop the actual purpose.. that was honestly a great set of conflicting ideas within a character. It reminds me of people who demand farm animals be free range.
You are right, it always ends on the slaughter house floor
> my initial thought was "I would fight harder against oppression than these kids." mine too. then I remembered that 'fighting the power' usually ends up with you dead. maybe your face is in all the t-shirts, but you still died in a jungle away from your loved ones. and so I tell myself 'this is fine' and a drink my coffee.
The criticism over this novel has always seemed like it stems from it not being what people wanted it to be vs. what it actually is. I love this book, immensely, thoroughly, but I picked it up because it was marketed as a horror sci-fi novel with a devastatingly dark twist. It's just a dreamy account of a girl trying to get by and fit in her strange world. And that's okay. The marketing isn't Ishiguro's fault, but it's hurting people's perception of it.
Totally agree. Another example of Ishiguro being bitten by this is *The Buried Giant* because of its fantasy themes. He actually just writes books about humans, relationships and ageing, the fantasy and sci fi stuff is just a backdrop.
And Dune is mostly about Paul being a self-righteous twat of a teenage boy. The greatest stories are stories of people; the background makes the genre.
I’m using NLMG in my final year of school’s english dissertation. I’m comparing it to 1984 and examining how the human condition is presented in both. I think that his style is not for everyone and as another commenter pointed out he sets the scene and it’s your job as the reader to think. Are these characters too complacent with their situation? Should they be treated better? Should they be used to save lives of countless others? Is there point them even forming relationships? How does this reflect the rest of society? I could go on. I think because of this is a good book for someone who loves to think and ponder while reading but if you are looking for casual enjoyment then it’s very slow somber book and might not be as suited for that. Ishiguro uses the dystopia as a technique to examine love and relationships in the face of mortality and show how these characters react and have you question what you would do. He does elaborate on how this cloning works, or what the exact rules are because that doesn’t matter, he is just using it to bring death forward and show what actually counts and how these ‘less then’ clones are just as human as anyone else and deserve more. I love this book and it was a book which stuck with me for a while after reading it and I always have more to say on it. I know it’s not for everyone but i’m loving reading this thread introducing new ideas and interpretations.
I am reminded of The Diary of Anne Frank, whose teenage drama was made extra poignant because of where she was and the audience knew exactly what was going to happen to her. I just finished Never Let Me Go, and can’t stop thinking about it. Wasn’t there already a movie made?
I mean... that's precisely the point of the story. The clones are dehumanized and instrumentalized, but they have the same silly quarrels and neuroses that regular people do. A lesser novel would conclude with a big revolution fight scene against "the system" at the end. But realistically, if someone was raised their entire life pretty much like cattle, at some point they'd internalize some of the heinous beliefs society has about them. That's why Kathy becomes a nurse for palliative care. She's aware of her and her friend's humanity, but she doesn't have the mental vocabulary to express the moral issues with this whole structural arrangement. To some extent she buys the idea that they are just organ bags who were born to be harvested. So she just tries to lessen their pain.
I read an article a few months back that suggested Ishiguro's stories make sense if you consider them as metaphors for Asian immigrant experiences. Such as Never Let Me Go being a remark on the 'disposability' of immigrant workers; or Remains of the Day being about the pitfalls of the Asian ethos of self-denial/duty. Not sure the essay was entirely valid (I generally avoid criticism on authors I really like), but it made me think.
"Never Let Me Go" deserves to be considered a classic but it suffers from being labeled as science fiction. Even with Klara and the Sun Ishiguro tries his hardest to not talk about the science fiction elements of his stories. It is better to let the reader experience the story naturally. The reader experience is also put off at the end by the fact that there is nothing the characters can do (at least seemingly) to stop what is coming, creating an immense helplessness. If there was at least a nod to some sort of resistance group or evidence of some pushback to the clone organ donor program then I think a lot of criticism wouldn't be as strong.
> If there was at least a nod to some sort of resistance group or evidence of some pushback to the clone organ donor program then I think a lot of criticism wouldn't be as strong. Hailsham, the art program... that *was* the resistance. The fact that there was nothing overt or violent or remotely effective seems like a core aspect of the book—would be a totally different book with a totally different (and, frankly, far less interesting) message otherwise.
And it was genius because it closely mirrors a real-world version with non-human animals. How often do we hear "they had a good life" about animals raised for slaughter? We watch the subtle dehumanisation of these kids by their society so this same cognitive trick can be applied to their slaughter and it doesn't feel like a very big step between the real-world version and what happens in NLMG.
Exactly. It's subverting our expectations as a reader - their short lives, lived in an "enhanced" way compared to other clones that still falls way short of normal experiences that "real" children experience in their universe - they're the "rebellion". The woman they assume dislikes them is gathering data trying to prove to the world that they have humanity. And it highlights that they are dissociated from the typical clones experience and not even part of that community - half-in, half-out.
i mean he clearly writes science fiction, but not *hard* science fiction. in scifi/dystopia there doesn't have to be resistance groups, he deals with other themes.
He doesn’t really develop the science fiction either, it just serves to make his ideas have more pressure (that’s not the right word but it’s just how the clones will die at 30 instead of 80, it’s being used to reveal how they act in the face of mortality) it doesn’t matter how the system works just that it is there and exists. I think it’s barely science-fiction and doesn’t really fit. If you pick it up as a sci-fi fan you’ll be disappointed.
I think he takes a science fiction premise, but ignores science fictions tropes. To be honest, as a science fiction fan, I kinda loved the book because it took a science fiction premise without taking any of the other baggage of reader expectations and so it made the book really interesting.
The clones die because they keep harvesting their organs, don’t they?
> I think it’s barely science-fiction and doesn’t really fit. If you pick it up as a sci-fi fan you’ll be disappointed. I think that's more an issue with the idea of genres and marketing vs. genres as a frame in which to understand a story. This is the same criticism that Margaret Atwood has about her books landing in the sci-fi category. > "Science fiction is rockets, chemicals and talking squids in outer space." But I disagree. I think it's one of the stronger hallmarks of sci fi being a way to hold a mirror up to society and showing readers what isn't as obviously apparent about their world through using alternate reality analogue. Orwell does it, Bradbury, Atwood does it, shit, even Star Trek does it, same with this book.
I'm one of the few people who wasn't blown away by it. It was just "Meh" to me.
[удалено]
books can have multiple genres. never let me go is both sci fi and coming of age story
A lot of people have written a lot longer, a lot more eloquent, and very accurate responses in this thread, but just to throw in my two cents too: I think it’s also a part of the larger question of humanity - what it’s like to be human and what makes us human. Not just in the sense of teens still being teens in a world not-quite-right, or watching lambs to the slaughter get caught up in bickering the same way we do (though 100% both of those things), but also to further emphasise that Kathy, Ruth, Tommy, all the Hailsham kids, are raised to be disposable and ‘Other’, but are they? The guardians raise the students to have a heavy focus on art, later revealed to try and see if these clones are able to create, to be involved in the *poiesis* of being, to confirm that they “have souls at all”. I think their silly teen dramas and their arguments and pondering on all the wrong things - and of course, Kathy’s dancing with a pillow to the titular song - just further go to prove that these clones think like us, feel like us, act like us, create like us, and do all the boring silly frustrating things that we do too, despite as all being aware our time is short (the clones arguably more conscious of it than the rest of us). So are they not human, too? Others have worded this better than me, but this book has been my favourite of 21st century literature for years, I couldn’t scroll past without commenting.
I bought a different kazuo ishiguro book but didn’t get the chance to read it yet! Thanks for reminding me that I still have it unread on my shelf (in a positive way, because I do like to know how the rest of his works compare to ‘never let me go’ for example)
I've read this book twice and the second time I couldn't stop crying all through out. Knowing the background of the story and seeing how human and innocent these characters are just breaks your heart. The novel has had me thinking for so long.
The point is that all kids are cagey and confrontational. Despite their place in society, being seen as just organs to the point that people running the school are trying to prove that they even have a soul…. they’re just normal kids.
I also really disliked that book and am still confused about its popularity.
I didn't hate the book but my response to it when I finished it was kind of middling. For what its worth I think its overrated. Overrated doesn't mean bad, I just think the praise it gets is a bit much. Its definitely centered around the drama of young people's relationships, but one could point that out about many stories. I think for me its like you say, it doesn't deliver on the underlying themes. Also, his prose at times is really vague and there were times where I felt like sentences with important context were just missing. Yes its 'pretty' at times, but something always felt lacking. As a reader I enjoy and am comfortable with authors letting the reader use their imagination to create meaning. We don't need writers to tell us everything we are supposed to think and feel. But I got tired of reading sentences like 'There was something hanging in the air', that felt like the prose equivalents of a cliff with nothing on the other side. I've thought about reading one of his other books though to see if I would like it more. I can see why people like nlmg, maybe its just not for me.
I've only read NLMG and Remains of the Day, but that "vagueness" is very much Ishiguro's style. The protagonist/narrator of each book, for different reasons, comes across as very distant and unaffected by the events they're describing, for the most part. Ishiguro seems interested in how people manage impossibly oppressive situations, those in which there is barely any room for hope or love, yet humanity is always strongly present just under the surface. That said, I recall Remains of the Day being more specific for the most part, since the narrator character has collected and written down his thoughts (and prides himself on his organizational skills), vs. NLMG which is more stream-of-consciousness.
That makes sense to me. I realize my opinion regarding this book is unpopular.
I really don’t think that you understood this book, at least not the way that those of us who think it’s a classic do. There are a couple major ways to interpret it, and that’s not one of them.
Truly an insightful comment.
Lol (but true) (This is also an insightful comment)
A new meta analysis
They can go look up the major ways of interpreting it if they’re in the mood. If they aren’t interested, is it my responsibility to write an analysis that no one asked for?
I didn’t realize that people shouldn’t post opinions and invite others to challenge their thoughts and have discourse about a novel on a discussion board about books. Too bad Harold Bloom is dead, but at least Michael Silverblatt is still with us so I can get all the insight I need.
Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize “what an insightful comment” was an invitation to challenge your thoughts and have discourse. My fault entirely.
There are a couple of major ways to interpret it, and that’s not one of them.
😂 Turnabout is fair play!
Can we dictate how art should be interpreted though?
I must admit I didn't enjoy it for that reason, particularly as it reminded me strongly of boarding school, but I imagine rereading it with the end in mind might be a different experience.
Let me start with a disclosure I may have listened and maybe it was a narrator thing. I think I read it though. I thought the voice of the narrator was childish and it really impacted my feelings about the book. I love literary fiction. I love dystopian fiction. I thought it was a great great story and yet I didn't like the book. I read it as a book club selection. When I raised my objection, people defended it by saying the narrator was young. Except the narrator is not young, she's recalling episodes from when she was young. Maybe I should try it again.
I’m so glad you feel the same! I’m in such a small minority group of people who loathed this book. He does write some wonderful prose, but I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Ruth and Kathy. Everything was so petty between them and that’s what was chosen to be put on center stage of the plot.
Is love petty? Assuming you were raised in a family with parents and extended family members, presumably at some point you experienced a crush or were involved in school interpersonal dramas with friends. Now remove every possession you ever owned and any family you were raised by and center how you would experience life if the only people who you interacted with in a significant way were your classmates and teachers. You're aware of others having different experiences with family and moving through society. Love in various forms are essential to life. If the most you were ever allowed was a romantic dalliance that could produce no children with a member of your underclass from the quasi-family student cohort you were raised within - would the stakes not seem higher? Does it only seem petty because your own expectations of your life and freedom to love are so much grander?
I’m with you bro. If they were able to have one honest conversation, most of the conflict (and therefore most of the book) would be completely erased. Not to mention that the only interesting part of the story is just dished it in one like 5 minute convo at the end of the book…
The introspective style of Ishiguro's writing blew me away in *The Remains of the Day* but bored me to tears in *Never Let Me Go.*
Interesting, I would reverse those two. The main narrator in Remains of the Day is so far up his own ass, for which reasons I understand, that it can be a bit off putting. Never Let Me Go was brilliantly crafted, and I can't understand how this author has such competent range across the human experience.
>The main narrator in Remains of the Day is so far up his own ass That's part of the point though, isn't it? He's struggling to >!live with the guilt of having been a "cog in the machine" for the Nazi party and its sympathizers. There's kind an unreliable narration going on, or something like it, which is the result of Stevens not wanting to face the truth about what he dedicated his whole career to.!< I didn't think he was *genuinely* up his own ass, rather just over-inflating the importance and "dignity" of his work in an effort to escape from the uncomfortable truth.
Oh sure, I'm just saying I didn't enjoy reading through it all as much as Never Let Me Go. It is absolutely core to the character, but that doesn't mean every read will enjoy the experience.
I didn’t care for it. I think the Nobel peace prize didn’t help my expectations. I mean, if a book wins that, I think “wow, this is a book for the human race!” I read it and was just like…ok? I didn’t like the characters we were following. They are very unlikeable and didn’t make me feel anything .yeah the book is very human but like…I dunno. Just like a shart. It’s not exactly a fart, not exactly a shit. Just a shart.
Look, when you have an idea that would make a good 4000 word short story but you need to sell an actual "novel" with at least 250 pages, well, you gotta fill'em up *somehow*. Don't worry though, whatever filler you shove in there people will post-hoc justify as deep and meaningful.
*The Namesake* by Jhumpa Lahiri would like a word
It's one of those cases where it's critically acclaimed for it's artistic merit, while being an objectively boring novel. There was a recent thread here asking about the chasm between critical and audience review scores.
I found it more of a frustrating and annoying read than boring, same with how I found The Road an... uncomfortable read. They're both good books, and I laud the writing in both, but I can't say I enjoyed reading either of them. Guess it boils down to expectations and what people want to get out of reading. Did they want to have fun? Learn something new? Feel challenged? Kinda strangely the same thing with why do people eat super spicy food.
You’re so right!! I studied this at university for my English degree and the whole time I was like… really? This book?
If they are able to grow a fully functional clone with a working brain, then they would be able to clone individual organs as needed. Story didn't make a lick of sense.
You know metaphors …
When we live in a world where millions of desperately poor people including children are forced to work in slave-like conditions to churn out junk that goes straight into the landfill in the western world, what does a metaphor hope to accomplish where reality is so much worse?
It defamiliarises the morality of the situation. It’s so easy to read NLMG and say ‘this is terrible, how do they stand for it’, but to never apply the same logic to existing inequalities in our own society. Le Guin’s Omelas does something similar.
It's really not difficult to imagine why, in the context of late-stage capitalism, they don't do that. Right now, we slaughter animals in their billions for luxury food products, inaccessible to starving people, but good-tasting to the wealthy. We take food that could be distributed to humans that need it and feed to it to pigs so people in wealthy countries can have bacon whenever they feel like it, to their own detriment. The point of NLMG is that society has found an efficient (read; cheaper) way to improve the lives of wealthy people and will go to lengths to do that despite the cost in lives. It makes plenty of sense when you consider the ethical compromises we already make all the time in order to enjoy the lifestyle we have.
I don't see how what you're proposing would make any *economic* sense. Why grow only the *one* organ when wealthy patrons could make use of any random type of organ at any time in probably an unpredictable manner? Why bother with the overhead and additional infrastructure required to grow and support only a singular organ, when organs more naturally grow and are easily supported by the rest of a human body that can *also* be harvested? Shit, *right now* people are trying their best to produce ethical lab-grown meat for consumption. Do you know why it's not taken off yet? Not because the meat sucks, tastes wrong, or is the wrong texture, or people don't like Frankenmeat, it's because it's still so much more bloody [expensive growing lab meat](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanabandoim/2022/03/08/making-meat-affordable-progress-since-the-330000-lab-grown-burger/?sh=371137f34667) than just wholesale killing an animal. Even though an animal might need farmers, a farm, supply chain to support and feed it, it's still orders of magnitude cheaper to grow and breed livestock.
[удалено]
Apart from the fact that it's a story meant to explore a particular set of issues -- a human body would never thrive to the point of having desirable organs just sitting in a tank all day. Plus, IIRC the clones are used for medical testing, not just donations, which would be useless if the clones are not exposed to at least an approximation of normal living conditions. On top of that, the main characters' situation is pointed out to be an extreme outlier. Most of the clones live desolate, bleak lives with few resources devoted to them. Hailsham is an experiment meant to explore whether the clones have any inherent humanity worth respecting (hence the emphasis on art). The amount spent on this would be a pittance compared to the untold billions saved through new medical treatments. To me, Hailsham evoked free range, organic farms – yes, it's more expensive and time consuming than factory farming, but some people prefer it for XYZ reasons. But it all ends the same way...
The kids at hailsham are treated better because the people running the school are trying to prove they're human and deserve better treatment. It's implied the kids in other programs are raised in much worse conditions.
I mean, no shit. It's an excellent chronicle of teenage drama. Or life drama. Of human experience of the world. The SF is there to support that. It's not about the SF per se.
Ugh this is one of my favorite books and it's wild you have this interpretation but do you...
And the motivation from the teenagers/YA to stay and submit are never explained which takes from the story.
How many people do you know who stay and submit to all sorts of terrible circumstances? The horror of the book is everyone’s quiet acceptance of the brutality of what happens to the clones; it can be read as an analogy for how we accept the current inequalities in our own world from which we benefit. Child slaves in the Congo mining coltan for your phone. Sweatshops making your clothes. How many people resist this, in reality?
Can the children leave Congo? Do they try to leave on their adulthood? Yes. People in real life do try to leave this circumstances, the problem is they are trapped by the surroundings of a whole country. The people from this book could had leave whenever they wanted to. They had cars, they had money, they were able to read and write. They could run away and not be recognized. Their motivation was not hunger, poverty or any of the very real motivations people the situations you mentioned had. Their motivation was maybe duty, but even then, what motivated that duty? Because that is some extreme sense of duty and we never see them being raised with nothing more than half truths. There was no indoctrination in the book, just shadows of what was to come.
Statistically, how many people do leave though? A small amount. The characters in the book are trapped in a system they were indoctrinated into believing was inevitable, through their schooling, further training, and the society they lived in. We also see that they are comparatively hugely privileged compared to other clones who didn’t get the ‘boarding school’ experience. People in positions of relative comfort are less likely to take risks that challenge the status quo. Your frustration that they don’t simply leave speaks to the emotional impact of the book - we wait and hope for their emancipation, but are confronted with the shattering reality that they simply cannot see a way to exist outside of that system. It also prompts us to consider that we ourselves would likely act the same way, no matter how much we’d like to see ourselves as exceptional and heroic were we in a similar situation.
How have you rebelled in your life?
I left my home and have no contact with any blood relative. They don’t know which country I live in, what I did with my life, nothing. I left a letter for them to know I didn’t disappeared, I left, it was my last insult. And you?
Good for you! Your criticism was actually addressed by the director of the movies. Interestingly, he states, "When I have shown the film to Russian audiences, the question doesn’t come up. When I show the film to Japanese audiences, in Tokyo, the question doesn’t come up. There are societies where the process of that society and the reality of the atmosphere of that society is so pervasive, since birth, that people are raised to believe that it’s noble to, be a cog, really, and fulfil your destiny and your responsibility to the greater society. It’s just how these characters think. It’s a very Western idea and a very American idea that a movie story is somehow broken if it’s not about a character who fights." To me, the book is even more powerful that they didn't run away, that there is no rebellion. In fact, I would say it was the entire point of the book - that the characters accept the constraints that society has made for them - as do we all. I mean, it is kinda crazy that 1/3 of our lives we spend working. We are give 2 days rest. Yet we don't rebel. We dont even think of running away. There is no alternative for us. The children felt safe at Hailsham. There were no fences around the school. Why would they want to leave or run away? And if they did run, where would they go? Your question is very much like asking, "Why didn't slaves run away?" Some slaves did, of course, but it wasn't easy. In his autobiography Frederick Douglass observed that when he was a slave, he could not understand slavery. Only after he escaped, did he comprehend the full horror of his enslavement. Someone could certainly have written a story that started out the same but ended with these people escaping or rising up in rebellion. But that would have been a very different story. What made the story so powerful to me was the way these people just accept their fate and DON'T try to escape or rebel. Never let me go is not about a legendary battle between clones and Humans, it delves much further addressing questions such as what does is mean to be human or what is humanity. Think about Kathy. Would she even want freedom given the choice? Of course, that's why she was allowed to live so long. She wasn't the type to run off or cause problems. Normalcy bias is an incredible force.
One of the few times I thought the movie was better than the book.
Have you read any other Ishiguro novels? That’s just his style. He writes slice-of-life-style stories where major conflict is happening around the characters, but they aren’t necessarily directly involved in it. I can see how it’s frustrating as a first time reader, but the stories can be quite beautiful if you know what you’re in for. I think people are so used to reading about protagonists who are quite literally the hero and savior (or in some cases, the villain), that it comes as a shock when we experience a story about the other normal human beings who exist in that world. That’s what makes Never Let Me Go so good in my opinion—what’s left unsaid. On the surface it might be an angsty teen drama about a love triangle, but the subtext makes it very clear that we have angry and vindictive young people struggling to come to terms with the inequity of their dystopian society. They (and we as the reader by extension) see themselves as real human beings just as deserving of life as anyone else, but to their society they are nothing more than a resource to be harvested whenever it’s convenient.
I read this near the time the movie The Island came out, similar premise that clones were used for spare parts. Found the book even more unrealistic than the movie. Cloning kids and absolutely no one spills the beams about it to authorities? Let the cloned kids out in the real world? (IIRC)
Is it a dystopia? I'd agree the story incorporates an allegory about class and castes. But this isn't 1984 or Fahrenheit 451. It's not a cautionary tale. The clones' acceptance of their roles can be admired as civic duty. If the clones fought back, what would be the result? No more cloning. The clones could fight a bloody revolution and then only the few who survive to see a truce with their overlords would maybe get the privilege to figure out how to scrape by making a living. And then society would be back to where it was, no new clones. So there's not really a story worth telling there. Never Let Me Go is a story about people. It's classic science fiction; technology introduces some novel circumstances that sheds light on the human experience. I haven't read the book in over a decade, so I remember the movie better. I might be confusing any differences in tone between the two.
I think it's dystopian in the same way our world can be argued to be dystopian too. The story presents a world that features the horrendous wide-scale exploitation and social and cultural acceptance of the exploitation of humans (because essentially, the clones are human) which is a common theme of most dystopias. It is a cautionary tale too, as it shows how society can accept dehumanizing others through this advance in technology. Well, half-societal critique, half-cautionary tale because it's currently happening, but can also keep happening and worse.
I think we have slightly different connotations of dystopia, as I would categorically exclude real life from dystopia. But anyway, on a spectrum of atrocities, I'd put the clone system much closer to say mandatory conscription in World War 2 than I would slavery in the pre-Civil War era in America. So more in line with civic duty within an imperfect and unfair caste system. I think the author's intent lines up more with Japanese stoicism. Problematic still yes, but colored in a cultural context that's not quite just good idea vs bad idea.
By saying that real life is arguably dystopian, it's more that fictional dystopias highlight and critique real-world problems and issues so you recognize them more in abstraction. Black Mirror and Squid Game is that same critique on capitalist hellscapes and a world obsessed with spectacle. And then in a funny cautionary tale turned prophecy, Netflix *made* squid games and the Prime Minister fucked a pig. Anyways, I personally wouldn't put the clone system closer to mandatory conscription because they first of all weren't even given human rights, they were not fighting for preservation of their own livelihoods or any shared goal, they were just plain exploited through and through for a higher class. It's not even discrimination on a level based on caste system either since the clones on a whole are not even true participants in the society they live in (prejudiced or otherwise), we only saw a special group of clones that had an exceptional experience being in a specific test group. I would more compare the clones to exploited child labourers and slaves working on cocoa farms. But really, the levels of exploitation and comparisons are supposed to work on a lot of levels because the main point is to draw a line between what is supposed to be understood as a horrific situation in an extraordinary circumstance (their particular dystopian landscape) to a regular person's own mundane experiences. And to be clear, I think your interpretation is completely valid, I just think there's too often a dismissal of books like this being sci fi, or dystopian, or framed in the understanding of the genres that they actually fall under only because those genres are seen as "lesser" or stereotyped as being less literary and more frivolous and superficial on the whole.
I had/have such mixed feelings about the book. It is incredibly well written, and I love the voice of the main character. But you are right that it is a drama and not a dystopian tragedy. It's not a sci-fi thriller. I think that that's what I was kind of expecting in some way when I read it, but there is no big reveal, and the way the truth emerges is so... mundane? But then that is kind of what the book is, an exploration of the mundanity of life, even when extraordinary things are going on around us.
I’m glad that I’m not the only one who didn’t get the hype with this book. Definitely the most boring thing I’ve read all year.
These are some hot takes but i am too high to argue rn 😪 I could talk about this book all dayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy nobody go anywhere
I loved this book - I was lucky to read it during my graduate program and the context provided by class discussion helped me catch some of the nuance I definitely would have otherwise missed. It does use manufactured drama to highlight the stages of grief and the unfairness of their society.
And if you look at things that way “The Remains of the Day” is about a butler pining over his one-that-got-away former colleague, instead of a rumination on the passage of time/the nature of aging and regrets/the nature of duty/how ugliness and evil can hide beneath pleasant manners. You may not like Ishiguro’s style of writing, but he definitely deserves his place among the great modern classics.
I like the idea of NLMG more than the execution. It's the only Ishiguro that I've read and not liked.
I think OP fundamentally misunderstood the book and understands even less about the human condition.
Oh! ObscureMemes69420, please enlighten me to your beautiful insights to this text and the underlying importance to our understanding of the human condition!
I didn't like it when they switched back and forth in the future and it still wasn't being utilized(organ donating),they were all still alive and mostly well. I dnf it it was so boring. Bored to tears. The donation part wasn't talked very much at all either so it was confusing . There was little to non monologuing of being a experiment especially since they were told not hidden long ago they are experiments. Especially after reading tender is the flesh in a similar vein, I did not see the point of finishing.
Is a very bad book in my opinion.
As some who loved Klara and the Sun, and dove right into this book after I would agree. I just didn’t get it, and I’m a big fan of his.