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NOVEL: Never Let Me Go
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AUTHOR: Kazuo Ishiguro
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DATE OF PUBLICATION: 2006
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REVIEW:
The word that I think best describes this novel is “haunting.” It’s one that stays with you and doesn’t let go easily.
It’s a deceptively simple coming-of-age story about the love and friendship between three students at a seemingly idyllic boarding school in the English countryside, completely separate from all society, where they grow up being taught that they are special and important, and only gradually learn of a dark secret and a nightmarish future that awaits them.
In most dystopian science fiction stories, the protagonists — once they learn the truth — rebel, or flee a la Logan’s Run or Blade Runner or The Giver. But not here. This book lays down a different response, one that’s certainly hard to forget.
The pace is slow, the odd euphemistic terminology puzzling at first, and the descriptions by the slightly obsessive narrator may seem unnecessarily detailed. There’s not much action. But for the patient reader, it’s a powerful morality tale about, among other things, what it means to be human.
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RATING (one to five whistles, with five being the best): 4 whistles
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HOW TO PURCHASE: Amazon
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ALSO ON OUR BOOKSHELVES:
A Patchwork Planet, Anne Tyler
Blue Highways, William Least Heat-Moon
Bonjour Tristesse, Francoise Sagan
Cockpit Confidential, Patrick Smith
Envious Casca, Georgette Heyer
Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson
The Dancer of Izu, Kawabata Yasunari
The Monogram Murders, Sophie Hannah
The Mother & Child Project, Hope Through Healing Hands (ed.)
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce
The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories, Saki
The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
Up At The Villa, W. Somerset Maugham
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Lead-In Image Courtesy of Smolina Marianna/Shutterstock.com
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Laura LaVelle is an attorney and writer who lives in Connecticut, in a not quite 100-year-old house, along with her husband, two daughters, and a cockatiel.
Laura can be contacted at laura@newswhistle.com
