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September 06, 2006

RfP - Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

Never judge a book by its cover. Right? Ok, 'fess up. We all do it. You wander the book store "just looking" and slide your fingers along the spines on the shelves. Sometimes it's the color, sometimes an image, sometimes a font or just a feeling, but you judge.

Never Let Me Go had been recommended to me by a few people and more than once I had picked it off the shelves, flipped a few pages and moved on to something else. Finally, I trusted my persistent reviewers and bought a copy. But that's where it ended. It sat on the stack to be read for almost a year. And why? Because I couldn't get over the cover. It reminded me of the seventies and of some unpleasant memory I couldn't quite place--something unsettling.

But vacations loomed and the "what books do I bring" question reared its ugly head and I tossed this one in the bag just in case the mood struck. When you run out of other books you will reach for what's left. And that is how I stumbled onto this book. Shallow, I know, but it's the truth and ironically the unsettling cover was very appropriate.

The first few chapters leave you guessing a bit at just why the students at Hailsham are special, at what their roles will be as carers or as donors. You become emotionally involved in the lives of these students--of these children.

I am not sure that I would have chosen this book without the glowing reviews that were repeatedly given to me or if I would have picked it up if those reviewers had shared too many spoilers so I will not share too much of the storyline here.

I found the ending very unnerving and yet I imagine that is exactly what I was supposed to feel. It makes you think. It makes you feel. It is beautifully written. Ishiguro makes the sci-fi comforting and realistic and the mundane foreign and suspicious.

I wish I would have done this as a group read because it is the kind of book that could really engender discussion. It's a book of choices and consequences and at the same time the main characters' lives are governed completely by a set of choices made before their lives began. How do you live when you have no choices? To ask the cliched question, "What makes a life worth living?" Is it a personal question? A religious question? A political question? Who has the right to answer?

A good read. I recommend it if you haven't read it yet. Don't let the cover fool you. Things aren't always as they appear.

My rating: ****

Posted by michelle at September 6, 2006 02:19 PM