I would like to talk a little bit about the novel “Never Let Me Go” by the Japanese writer Kazuo Ishiguro. The novel is a dystopian work about the life of cloned children, showing that people need to take good care of their own bodies in order to live for others and to keep others alive.
Students at a boarding school called Hailsham have been cloned as organ donors. This school is different from other boarding schools and its students are not ordinary students. The main character of the novel, Kathy H., works as a caregiver for people cloned as organ donors. Kathy, herself a clone, will complete twelve years if she works for eight more months. Previously, she did not have the right to choose the patients she would care for, but in recent years she has been given the right to choose, and Kathy has taken on the task of caring – at different times – for her friends Ruth and Tommy, with whom she studied at Hailsham (a boarding school for clones).
The novel narrates the events through Kathy’s mouth, and she frequently returns to the past, telling the reader about a period of about twenty-five years in different periods. Through these flashbacks, the reader gets to know Ruth, Tommy and Kathy as individuals with different characters, as well as their supervisors and friends during their Hailsham years.
While the novel presents various episodes from the childhood and youth of individuals who have been specially cloned to become organ donors, it stimulates our associative world with some details between the lines. From the beginning of the book, you find yourself in the story. Unnecessary details are not included too much. There are mysterious events from the beginning of the book. While reading the book, you are left with many questions. In some places, you find answers to your questions. Some questions, unfortunately, have no answers.
This novel makes people question why they cannot speak out against what is done to them or why completely different people have so much say in their lives and offers readers the opportunity to discover the heroic moments in their own lives. What human life is more valuable than another human life? Maybe we are not cloned and we are not in a war for others to live. But we ignore our own lives, our own happiness, joys and sorrows, so that others can live well.
The book “Never Let Me Go” is an impressive work that evokes different emotions. I highly recommend you to read this book and meet the author Kazuo Ishiguro.
COUNTRY
Year of First Edition: 2005
Genre: Novel
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
