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A review by librovermo
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
5.0
I am 100% convinced that that best way to consume this beautiful, yet disturbing novel is through audio. The book is written in first person, very casually. The main character, Kathy, goes off on tangents or will start talking about an event and then remember she has to tell the reader about a prior event in order to give this current one some context. It’s as if your friend is sitting beside you telling you the story of her early years and that’s what makes the audiobook so much better than the physical book. It really feels even more like Kathy is talking to you, she’s sharing something with you specifically.
Kathy’s reflections on her time at Hailsham and her relationships with other students and the guardians were all very interesting to me and the stories from her early childhood especially felt very realistic and even brought up some memories of my own childhood. As the children grew up at the boarding school, they learned bit by bit what it meant to be a student at Hailsham, but none of them fully understood until after they graduated, and even then some things were still murky. Kathy and her friends knew they were special, and the guardians even told them so, but what it truly meant to be so special was never clearly spelled out during their time at Hailsham. So much of what they really needed to know was hidden within their school lessons. Or in a rumor, a whisper, an overheard conversation. Their lives were puzzles they only got a piece of every once in a while but tried to put together anyway and it was heartbreaking to “witness.”
Kathy’s reflections on her time at Hailsham and her relationships with other students and the guardians were all very interesting to me and the stories from her early childhood especially felt very realistic and even brought up some memories of my own childhood. As the children grew up at the boarding school, they learned bit by bit what it meant to be a student at Hailsham, but none of them fully understood until after they graduated, and even then some things were still murky. Kathy and her friends knew they were special, and the guardians even told them so, but what it truly meant to be so special was never clearly spelled out during their time at Hailsham. So much of what they really needed to know was hidden within their school lessons. Or in a rumor, a whisper, an overheard conversation. Their lives were puzzles they only got a piece of every once in a while but tried to put together anyway and it was heartbreaking to “witness.”