Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

Genre: Lit: Dystopic

Awards: Booker nomination

First Line: My name is Kathy H.

Best Line: We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day, when we were grown up, and we were free to travel around the country, we could always go and find it again in Norfolk.

Book Blurb: From Booker Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro comes a devastating new novel of innocence, knowledge, and loss. As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules -- and teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were.

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

The Critics say: Praise be to this complex, dystopian novel. Ishiguro keeps secrets throughout, making it difficult for most reviewers to write coherent statements about the book, but there seems to be an overall agreement: the book is an affecting commentary on race, science, and humanity.

I say: Great, quick, easy read. Clearly Ishiguro knows how to write -- he's won the Booker prize for one book, and been short-listed for this one. That being said, this is a modern novel. The language is quick and crisp, the book is relatively short, and quite a page-turner. In fact, I read the entire book in the amount of time it took to travel from Grand Rapids to Chicago by plane (27 minutes), eat lunch (30 minutes) and then board a flight for NYC (1 1/2 hours). A committment, this book is not.

The book begins in a clearly dystopic world. We are greeted by a 31 year old woman, who then proceeds to take us, the reader, through her childhood. About two thirds of the book takes place during her youth, alternating between a mystical, nostalgia-filled look at a boarding school, to a semi-independent living enclave called "The Cottages." We don't know the exact rules of this world until the very end -- in fact, wisely, Ishiguro leaves some parts entirely vague -- just as his characters are not entirely certain of the political structure of their world, neither is the reader.

The writing is at times a bit stilted, and there were definite moments when I didn't buy the female POV. The love story, in particular, seemed written from a man, trying to fit it into a woman's thoughts. The wistful, reflective nature of the book allows that, somewhat, and it is never distracting enough to put the book down.

Recommendation: Pick it up. Read it. Just make certain that you have a long chunk of time open, because once you begin to crack the mystery of Hailsham, you won't want to leave it alone. Light enough to be a beach-read, but lit enough not to embarrass you while waiting for an interview.

Grade: Overall: A-

Plot: A-

Pacing: A

Characterization: B-

Writing: B+