Never Let Me Go
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
This had been on my summer reading list since May but I’ve been enjoying so many YA lately that I’ve kept putting it off.
This was an interesting book about several kids at a boarding school. What you don’t know about them isn’t revealed until part way through the book but they were constantly referring to it. Donors would be mentioned but it isn’t revealed what exactly a donor is until mid-way through the first 100 pages. Basically, and this isn’t ruining anything, but these kids are cloned people who are raised to ultimately donate their organs. Ethically it brings up a lot of things, these kids don’t seem to think it’s a big deal or even question their reason for existence, they seem to accept it.
What was strange about this book and, at times frustrating, was that I felt like the narrator knew more than I knew and she wasn’t telling me what was going on. It was also frustrating to only find out some of the secrets in the book as the characters were finding out about them. That’s what kept me reading but all along I felt like there was something I should know and just was missing out on for some reason. It’s revealed in the end. I’m sure part of that is because the book is told from the point of view of a 31-year-old woman telling us about her life when she was 8, 16 and older. I would have liked some more insight into the characters and what they thought about their lives.
July 8-20, 2006
