Never Let Me Go in 2025 Reading Challenge

Mar 21, 2011 Jane rated it liked it

"Like" is the wrong word to use for my experience of this book. It was heartbreaking, uncomfortable, frustrating and ultimately rewarding to read, but I don't know if I would have finished if it hadn't been for the discipline of the book club. I thought about the fact that this isn't a story just for the three main characters. We all have such a short time in which we are alive. And bargaining for more is part of the human condition. I also wondered why no one tried to escape. I guess the donors ...more

Like · see review

Aug 20, 2011 Katie Kenig rated it it was amazing

Shelves: dystopia, 1001-books-before-you-die

“And if these incidents now seem full of significance and all of a piece, it's probably because I'm looking at them in the light of what came later...”

What a beautiful, haunting, terrible, lovely story of humanity.

This is not a love story, though it is about love. This is not a dystopia story, though the world it is set in is undeniably dystopian. This is a story about humanity, about what makes us human, where the boundaries between us and the loss of what is essential to be a person stand.

Once ...more

Like · see review

Jul 16, 2016 Kat rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. While I really liked The Remains of the Day, I'm a bit undecided about this book. The entire concept of the book is much like The Remains of the Day - it's about the past, what's lost, and a kind of hollowness that's not exactly that devastating kind of sad but still sad all the same.

Some spoilers abound.

As I first read the book I was a bit confused but their being sheltered and their names - no full names at all. Main character Kathy talks about being a "carer" for 12 years and soon having to b While I really liked The Remains of the Day, I'm a bit undecided about this book. The entire concept of the book is much like The Remains of the Day - it's about the past, what's lost, and a kind of hollowness that's not exactly that devastating kind of sad but still sad all the same.

Some spoilers abound.

As I first read the book I was a bit confused but their being sheltered and their names - no full names at all. Main character Kathy talks about being a "carer" for 12 years and soon having to be a "donor". The school, Hailsham, first sounded like a boarding school, but then I start to notice there's no "family" involved, and that the teachers are "guardians". And then there was all that talk about artworks, and big secrecy stuff. At that time I started to suspect the eventual dystopianess of it. It was at the point where Tommy hurt his elbow and then Kathy was explaining how when some other student would do something gross (I do not recall, horde all the food I think?) then they would all "unzip a liver" and throw it around? And that somewhere Kathy had revealed that it was "okay to have sex because they can't have babies anyway" ... I had my first suspicions about them being "test" children by then.

Later around the middle of the book, Ruth says it out loud that they are really "clones" of people, so that sort of closed this one question that was bugging me.

So apparently, they get their education, then are sent off to the world. They would go into training to be a "carer", someone who would take care of the "donors". It wasn't explicitly explained, but I got the impression that everyone would start as a "carer" and then eventually become a "donor", but it is never explicit what they are actually "donating". At then end, I guess when their bodies fail (done enough of "donating" I guess?) they "complete" (die, I suppose).

What I've read on reviews about the book, that Kathy, Tommy and Ruth having a strange relationship didn't really come to me. I thought it pretty normal - Friend with bully-tendencies (Ruth) knew all along friends Kathy and Tommy had a thing for each other but decides to get in between them and drive them apart. When something serious comes up (Ruth's impending "completion"), then she apologizes and urges them to "get together" and "try for a deferment".

Kathy and Tommy trying to get that "deferment" was the whole unveiling of the full mystery, which by then was pretty anti-climatic.

In the end, Tommy "completes" as well, and soon Kathy would embark her life as a "donor", and the book ends there, with Kathy imagining that she would see Tommy again while on a field in Norfolk (some inside "joke" that was laid out in the beginning of the book - "all lost things end up in Norfolk", and Kathy had just lost Tommy).

I kind of get the whole emotional direction this book wanted to go (much the same as The Remains of The Day) but the whole dystopian setting kind of makes it all weird. I'm not sure how accurate these test tube babies thing is (assuming it's all fictional) so... at the end of the day, I get the feeling that this is just the same book as The Remains of The Day, repackaged.

Despite that, the mysterious premise was what egged me to read on. "I don't understand it! One more page and it should clear things up!" was a constant thought when I read past curfew or wanted to just go do something else.
...more

Like · see review

Jul 06, 2015 Laura Kump rated it it was ok

I wasn't a fan. The premise of the book was really good. I even can say I liked the narrator Kathy. I didn't mind the conversational style of telling the story, but at times it felt forced. Too many "for examples" for my taste. Overall I finished it. Kept hoping for the big excitement but it didn't come for me. As others said there was no big reveal, or surprise. I actually hoped for a different ending for the characters. Oh well. ...more

Like · see review