I finished Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro today. I liked it a lot. It was a fast read, maybe two or three days. Its genre iss literary sci-fi, and we all know there's not enough of that in the world.
It's hard to write about this book without giving away pivotal details of plot. That created an interesting conundrum for reviewers when the book came out last year. I was perusing the different reviews via my new favorite web site, Metacritic. About two-thirds of the critics gave away the story, while one-third opted to vague it up and speak in generalities.
What is Metacritic? It's a wonderful site that gathers links of reviews -- movies, music, books, tv, games -- all in one area. Then it ranks the reviews and creates a ranking so that you can compare any work to any other. It's like Siskel & Ebert meets The Wisdom of Crowds.
For an example, take a look at the page for Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, a book I really liked. Entertainment Weekly says it "kept me hooked til the final page," while Publisher's Weekly calls it "entertaining and illuminating." On the other hand, the Globe & Mail says it's "a mish-mash of half-developed ideas" and The New Republic calls it "poor in analysis." But it's also clear from the page that positive reviews outnumber the pans.
I'm going to use the power of the blog to post by my review of "Never Let Me Go" in the comments field. So don't click on the comments unless you want to see important plot details revealed!
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"Never Let Me Go" takes place in a seemingly idyllic boarding school in England, around the early 1980s. The students are given a fine education, develop deep friendships with each other, and are constantly told that they are special and privileged. But there's a horrifically dystopian catch that is only slowly revealed: The children are clones, and they're destined to die after having their vital organs removed one by one. Creeeeeeepy.
My favorite thing about this book is the characterization. The narrator, Kathy H., is an astute observer, but she never questions the system she was created for. She just accepts the status quo as it is, and it's only at the end that I concluded her desire to please and excel was actually a serious character defect. Then there are her friends, the rebel Tommy and the imperious Ruth, who each have a lot of nuance and complexity. The dynamic between the three is fascinating.
I also thought Ishiguro really captured the milieu and feel of boarding school.
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