A review by nepheloma
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

This is a very interesting book that I personally interpreted as an allegory for the course of life.  The main question it focuses on is: why do we do anything if there's no hope, or at least nothing more than this life, in the end? It's basically a reflection on the absurdity that characterizes our existence through the experiences of three very, very human characters. They are all very flawed, sometimes even to an aggravating extent, but I found it kind of comforting how openly their flaws were explored and how they kept being connected, not despite these flaws, but even alongside them.
What I personally realized through this book was that we keep on living life because that's the core of our humanity: to create and to exist, no matter how absurd our existence might really be. We're not different from the students at all -our existence is a path straight towards death, just like theirs. But we keep carrying on, because what matters is that we live until we die.


I think that the only thing that I didn't enjoy very much was the writing style of this book. I do understand that it is designed to reflect that the story is told orally, but I found it repetitive. Sometimes, there was foreshadowing that was too obvious or even repeatedly mentioned, which made me feel that the set ups the writer wanted to create were a little not too strongly built. At times, I also found the narration somewhat emotionless, especially in the beginning of the book, but even though this bogged me, I have to admit that it did contribute to the general morose, yet hopeful, atmosphere that the book had.
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