What I loved: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

One day my younger brother came home to find me sobbing at the kitchen table. I told him not to worry, that I was just reading a book and he said, why would you read something that makes you cry?

I’m still not sure how to answer that question but, thinking back on the books and films I’ve loved the most, there’s a definite trend in this direction. In a strange, masochistic way, the ability to make me tear up is my litmus test for any good book, and novelist Kazuo Ishiguro has passed this test several times. My hands-down favourite is Never Let Me Go. I won’t talk too much about the story itself though, as much of the pleasure in reading Ishiguro here lies with the surprises he’s tucked into the plot.

Never Let Me Go is set in an alternate version of the 1990s and is narrated by Kathy H, a ‘carer’ coming to the end of a successful career. As she travels through the English countryside, she reminisces about her time as a student at the seemingly-idyllic Hailsham. A sense of menace lingers beneath the banality of Kathy’s memories: a woman who visits the school recoils in fear from the children; the older students say a boy’s body was found in the woods nearby with hands and feet removed. These moments float to the surface of the narrative so gently that they slip by unseen, all the while gradually and deliberately building tension.

In this way it’s easy to see how Ishiguro could be described as deceptive. He has an uncanny ability to lull you into an unsuspecting state of passivity – something akin to boredom – and then all of a sudden, in only a few brief sentences, he’ll hit you with an emotional punch. He basically karate chops right at your heart. In Never Let Me Go Kathy seems such an ordinary person. Her tragedies are recognisable in our own lives – a childish fight with a friend, a crush on a boy with a girlfriend – but these small tragedies are thrown into sharp relief when her background becomes clear to us. Ultimately, I still find them heartbreaking long after finishing the book.

Even more heartbreaking is the manner in which Ishiguro’s characters respond to their losses by restricting their hopes and hiding their desires. There’s a scene in Never Let Me Go where Kathy stops for a break while driving to her next job. She walks a little way from the car, out into a windy day with rubbish caught along the fence line. She stands still, looks into the distance and imagines, just for a moment, a tiny glimpse of what she longs for. And then she turns back to the car and drives off.

This scene just kills me. I feel so strongly for Kathy in that moment and when I read a book that is exactly what I want to find: a moment of understanding with another person, even if it makes me cry.


Bronte Coates

Cover image for Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro

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