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Never Let Me Go

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans comes an unforgettable edge-of-your-seat mystery that is at once heartbreakingly tender and morally courageous about what it means to be human. Never Let Me Go follows Kathy as she grows from schoolgirl to young woman at Hailsham, a seemingly pleasant English boarding school. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.

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288 pages

Average rating: 6.92

577 RATINGS

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28 REVIEWS

Community Reviews

Ali D
Jan 18, 2025
9/10 stars
Made a real impact!
Anonymous
Jan 11, 2025
8/10 stars
more than three years after reading this book i am jolted from near slumber to write this review as the impression of that boarding school floats across my mind.

safe to say this book made a lasting impression, and a good one at that.
Haide
Jan 06, 2025
8/10 stars
3.5
Anonymous
Dec 12, 2024
6/10 stars
3.5 stars ✧˖°

What I mean to say is that at first when she would say that, it was charming. By part two it’s like yeah girl just spit it out. I did like the way the author connected each chapter through little details that were built on in each little story, even if not necessarily chronologically. Did it meander? yeah. but I also see why it’s considered a 21st century classic.

It’s not the book's fault that I was told the premise once in 9th grade and turned it into a much more suspenseful, angsty, action filled novel in my head.

I've spent ten years thinking this book was about a group of teenagers learning thet were clones halfway through the novel. Not true. They knew the whole time. The readers weren't supposed to find out until the middle. They knew the whole time. The things the teachers were hiding was a moral dilemma about how society would react towards clone. Interesting ethical questions were raised, but the realization of "people don't like clones?" was not as jarring as the "we're clones??" I had in mind

both Tommy's theory about the art "showing who is compatible to be in love" and Kath's theory that Madame was crying because the song Never Let Me Go was about a woman having a baby felt convoluted to me. (I also appreciated that the name of the book was the name of the song, but especially near the end when the author repeated it three times in one sentence, it started losing its symbolic gravity for me)

I was right that they collected the students' art to "prove they had souls at all" and my heart did break for these kids me tossed around like test dummies for science's sake, don't get me wrong
Tedhildner
Dec 09, 2024
5/10 stars
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