Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go is a 2005 novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's dystopian science fiction, but think again if you think you'll find it in the science fiction section in the bookstore. Nooooo. It gets prime placement in the literary fiction section. Maybe that has something to do with it being a Booker Prize finalist by the author of a Booker Prize winner. But still... I'd love to see it shelved in its rightful home.

from the back of the book:

From Booker prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro comes a devastating new novel of innocence, knowledge, and loss.

As children Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules -and teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were.

Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life, and for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them so special –and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together. Suspenseful, moving, beautifully atmospheric, Never Let Me Go is another classic by the author of The Remains of the Day.

I love this book. It's touching but not sweet or sappy. It's measured in how it lets the reader in on the story. It's written to let us know things in the same way the students learn them: little by little, and always in such a way that we don't realize the full implication until we learn more. This book can break your heart.

SF Signal gives it a glowing recommendation and says, "PROS: Thought-provoking; emotional resonance; sympathetic characters; written with an unmatched and beautiful subtlety." Slate Magazine calls it "a thoughtful, crafty, and finally very disquieting look at the effects of dehumanization on any group that's subject to it." Salon.com calls it a "stunning page turner".