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A review by bookber
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
4.0
This has been on my TBR for approximately 8 years now so as part of my mission to finally read my back-listed books I picked this up to provide me with a break from mystery thrillers. I would describe Never Let Me Go as contemporary fiction with a subtle dystopian sub-genre. The reason I say that is because it feels different to every other dystopian book I’ve read – it’s still set in a nightmarish world but it is very downplayed and pretty much just accepted by the characters. There is little to no resistance to what is happening to these characters and I feel this is quite unique in a story of this sort.
I don’t want to give away too much because the details of how this world is dystopian are slowly revealed throughout the book, so all I will say is that we follow our protagonist Kathy, a carer in her late twenties who is reminiscing about her past experiences mainly with her friends Ruth and Tommy.
I noticed that a lot of it is structurally repetitive in the sense that it often interrupts the flow of the story to describe the significance of a previous event, object, or argument before continuing the story, which felt a bit overdone by the end but I didn’t dislike it too much. I also found one of the main characters to be really irritating and I wished that they got called out more for some of their toxic behaviours.
This book had a strange “quietness” to it in that it’s not in your face with all the horrible things going on in the world, it’s very subtle and downplayed and I think that adds to sadness of this book. It did make me cry and it left me with a lot to think about after it ended.
I don’t want to give away too much because the details of how this world is dystopian are slowly revealed throughout the book, so all I will say is that we follow our protagonist Kathy, a carer in her late twenties who is reminiscing about her past experiences mainly with her friends Ruth and Tommy.
I noticed that a lot of it is structurally repetitive in the sense that it often interrupts the flow of the story to describe the significance of a previous event, object, or argument before continuing the story, which felt a bit overdone by the end but I didn’t dislike it too much. I also found one of the main characters to be really irritating and I wished that they got called out more for some of their toxic behaviours.
This book had a strange “quietness” to it in that it’s not in your face with all the horrible things going on in the world, it’s very subtle and downplayed and I think that adds to sadness of this book. It did make me cry and it left me with a lot to think about after it ended.