Published: 2005
The premise of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go poses a disturbing question to the reader: if you, or your partner or child, needed an organ transplant to live, to what extent would you be willing to turn a blind eye to where the replacement organ came from? In this alternative version of contemporary Britain, cloned humans have been raised for organ harvest for decades and – as we discover – most people choose to either remain wilfully ignorant of where the organs are coming from, or to deny humanity to cloned donors.
The story follows Kathy, now thirty-one, from the age of about twelve. At first, Hailsham School, where the first part is set, appears to be an idyllic boarding school with a focus on creativity. Kathy develops friendships with volatile-tempered Tommy, and the manipulative Ruth. But from the outset, references to guardians, donors, and carers hint that something is not quite right. As the story progresses, the three central characters leave Hailsham and, in the wider world, discover more about their place in society and the grim fate of ‘completion’ that has always awaited them.
The novel has two principal strengths. Firstly, the dystopian, sci-fi premise is intriguing. Unlike other dystopias, such as the ultra-conservative patriarchy in Margaret Atwood’s A Hand Maid’s Tale, it is not immediately obvious that anything is wrong in this reality; instead the awful truth is dripped in, little by little, and is made all the more shocking by the way that society is otherwise the same as the real world. But by the end of the novel I was left with too many unanswered questions about the details of how the underpinning concept works. For example, the clones seem to go willingly to their fate as donors, after spending a period acting as carers for those already donating. They are provided with cars and allowed to move around the country to perform their duties as carers, giving them a foretaste of their own destiny. So why wouldn’t they just run away? If they were indoctrinated against this, when and how was this achieved? That’s not all, but I’ll refrain from delving into more (as these would constitute spoilers). The premise felt frustratingly incomplete.
This criticism may well be addressed by the author arguing that this isn’t a horror or sci-fi novel at all – it’s a coming of age story, and therefore the ins and outs of the system in which they live are incidental. This brings me to the book’s second, and most significant, strength. As a coming-of-age story it is crafted expertly, and it is particularly impressive how Ishiguro, a middle-aged man, is able to write convincingly in the first person as a young woman, and about the way teenage girls interact with each other. The manipulative, emotional bitchiness of Kathy’s best friend Ruth must be recognisable to anyone who remembers high school. Similarly Tommy is also treated cruelly by his peers, but in an inversion of what most people experience, he is great at sports but is tormented for not being ‘creative’. These interactions play out against the disquieting background of the characters discovering more about their futures, and is all the more poignant for it.
I found the conclusion a bit of a let-down however, essentially because I always knew where the story was headed and how it would end – Ishiguro makes it evident almost from the outset that, whatever happens, things aren’t going to end well for his main characters. In the latter part of the book, there is a contrived ‘reveal’ about Hailsham and where the school fits in to the donation system, but this felt unsatisfying, in part because it was difficult to believe Kathy couldn’t have found this out through others, earlier in the story.
I would recommend this novel for its interesting weaving together of drama, sci-fi, horror and coming-of-age elements, and for tackling troubling moral questions about ethics and medicine. Even if I can’t help the nagging feeling that Ishiguro (who was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Never Let Me Go) could have fleshed it out a little better.
As a final side note, Never Let Me Go was made into a film in 2010, with a screenplay by Alex Garland (best known for his novel The Beach, and the screenplay for 28 Days Later). I’ve not seen it yet, but the novel reminded me, in concept at least, of the (admittedly not very good) 2005 film The Island. It’s sort of like Never Let Me Go with more car crashes and explosions, but I can recommend it over this book in one plot aspect: the clones actually try to escape their fate, rather than just blundering towards the operating table as they inexplicably do in Ishiguro’s world.
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