Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

Sometimes it is hard to put into exact words what makes a novel great, or terrible, or rightly explain why it makes you feel as it does. I read this some weeks ago and it has hung unto me since then, demanding extra thought and time. Now. not to spoil any details, but when I put this book down I was not hit with any catharsis, any great overpowering emotion. Rather I was left with merely the dull despairing ache that had been my companion through most of the novel. For a tragedy it certainly is, but one lacking the unexpected, one lacking the surprise or great revelations. What ones that are given are meted out slowly through the course of the entire story. That was why I waited so long to write anything concerning this, for only in hindsight was the simple and terrible beauty finally visible in pattern.
There are the standard things to say about why this novel is superb, i.e., that the characters, especially the narrators two friends and a certain teacher, are so richly developed I find it hard to believe they are entirely fictional. But all that became secondary as the novel slowly unfolded all its deliberate heartbreak. A fantastic treatise on trying to find life in the face of the inevitable, it finally allowed to sum up what, to me, always makes a novel great: it made me want to write.


I will try to post more reviews when I can, and I'll stick with a simple 5 point rating scale. This was a 5/5, with a bullet.