Nunca me abandones

[Never Let Me Go]
Year: 
2005
Type: 
Public: 
Moral assessment: 
Type: Literature
Nothing inappropriate.
Some morally inappropriate content.
Contains significant sections contrary to faith or morals.
Contains some lurid passages, or presents a general ideological framework that could confuse those without much Christian formation.
Contains several lurid passages, or presents an ideological framework that is contrary or foreign to Christian values.
Explicitly contradicts Catholic faith or morals, or is directed against the Church and its institutions.

Ishiguro, one time Booker winner: Artist of the Floating World 1989, and once short-listed as The Unconsoled 2000, and multi prize winner, this time takes his readers to a strange world, a world of clones and doners of body-parts. The Observer reviewer describes the novel as ‘oppressively brilliant’. The narrative voice of Kathy H dominates the work, she looks back on her curious english boarding-school type existence at a place called Hailsham (its worth considering this place name in the context of the novel Hail-sham). Her world appears logical and mundane, the surface of her language is so steady and familiar that it takes the reader a little time to discover the disturbing facts of the lives she describes.
The first clue comes in her use of simple euphemisms, she is a 'carer these days' she explains, she looks after 'donors' before they 'complete' and remains in thrall to the 'guardians' who taught her at school. Kathy and the rest of the children who were at Hailsham are clones and their macabre stories form the basis for this bleak narrative.
What exactly Ishiguro is trying to achieve in this novel remains ambiguous, it is very skillfully written but fails somewhat in the area of suspension of belief. How do the characters remain out of contact with 'real' people when they come to inhabit the real world? The power of Ishiguro’s writing pretty well carries the reader through this problem. The book is readable without being particularly enjoyable. (…). Ishiguro appears to raise issues of some importance for society, the cloning issue and the imagined deficiencies of these type of humans, and their gruesome reason for existence, to supply body-parts for the sick until they 'complete'.
There are a few references to the sexual activity of these clone-people, altough they are not of great significance. The novel has a tremendous importance because it asks big questions about where society is going.
A.D. (Ireland, 2005)