Collections
Description
Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it's only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.
Media reviews
Ishiguro is extremely good at recreating the special, oppressive atmosphere of school (and any other institution, for that matter)—the cliques that form, the covert rivalries, the obsessive concern with who sat next to whom, who was seen talking to whom, who is in favor at one moment and who is
Show More
not. Show Less
The eeriest feature of this alien world is how familiar it feels. It's like a stripped-down, haiku vision of children everywhere, fending off the chaos of existence by inventing their own rules.
"Never Let Me Go" is marred by a slapdash, explanatory ending that recalls the stilted, tie-up-all-the loose-ends conclusion of Hitchcock's "Psycho." The remainder of the book, however, is a Gothic tour de force that showcases the same gifts that made Mr. Ishiguro's 1989 novel, "The Remains of the
Show More
Day," such a cogent performance. Show Less
This extraordinary and, in the end, rather frighteningly clever novel isn't about cloning, or being a clone, at all. It's about why we don't explode, why we don't just wake up one day and go sobbing and crying down the street, kicking everything to pieces out of the raw, infuriating, completely
Show More
personal sense of our lives never having been what they could have been. Show Less
Awards
Booker Prize (Longlist — 2005)
Locus Award (Nominee — Science Fiction Novel — 2006)
National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist — Fiction — 2005)
The Morning News Tournament of Books (Quarterfinalist — 2006)
James Tait Black Memorial Prize (Shortlist — Fiction — 2005)
Alex Award (2006)
Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Shortlist — 2006)
Salon Book Award (2005)
Arthur C. Clarke Award (Shortlist — 2006)
Locus Recommended Reading (2005)
San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year (Fiction — 2005)
Village Voice Favorite Books (2005)
Notable Books List (2006)
Time Magazine's Best Books of the Year (Fiction — 2005)
Language
Original publication date
2005