Never Let Me Go
By: Kazuo Ishiguro / Narrated By: Rosalyn Landor
Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
I’m coming to think Ishiguro’s style miiiiight be a Love It-or-Hate It kinda thing
And I think I miiiiight be of the Yeh, I Kinda Like It group and probably only cuz I’d fairly recently listened to The Remains of the Day and found it to be a subtle, NEVER in-your-face, dissection of deferred agony.
Here again in Never Let Me Go, we have Kathy H., a 31-year old Carer, as she reflects on her life thus far, looking back at her friendship with Ruth and Tommy and of their years at Hailsham, an elite school in England’s countryside.
Back when we’d been considering Never Let Me Go and were listing it on my week’s Listening, I’d kinda scratched my head and suggested it might have Mystery as a subcategory cuz I was thinking of the movie, which I’d seen. I can’t quite remember it all that well, but it seemed that things weren’t overtly stated but that they kinda dawned on you as the story unfolded.
Well, there’s no mystery here because Ishiguro kinda flatly states things in bold as the story progresses. Kathy cares for individuals who are donors/donators, who will be cut open to have various organs and such removed until they Complete with their 4th Donation. As children at Hailsham, they’ve been told by the Guardians that they’re very special, that they must never smoke, should stay healthy. But at the same time, there’s one Guardian who is kinda going schizzy at the place, thinking they (The students) should be made aware of so much more. One day, as a group of students gather, some boys start talking about what careers they’ll have after Hailsham. No No No! the Guardian, Miss Lucy, shouts. And she lets them know they will NEVER have futures like that, and they will have only one outcome. She doesn’t last too much longer at Hailsham.
Over and over, Ishiguro writes down the lines, letting us know things flat-out, to the point where, after reading some other reviews, I was wondering how on EARTH people could’ve missed so much? Ishiguro kinda sorta gets a bit repetitive about it all, but we see that THAT is the Guardians’ style at Hailsham: Let loose a single shocking line, then tell the children that line over and over as lives progress, then let loose aNOTher shocking line, then tell them THAT over and over. This lets the students kinda sorta, yeh yeh yeh, understand that there’s THAT out there waiting for them, but la-dee-da, ho-hum, and on to the task of growing up and making art projects. All while we, the listeners, are shocked and saying: Wait! Whazzaaaa?!
At the risk of saying nothing (I sinCEREly don’t want to leave any Spoilers even tho’ I really don’t think Ishiguro’s writing builds to a grand revelation, it kinda sorta does…), I’ll just say that, while I had many questions (Why were Ruth and Kathy friends; wasn’t their relationship toxic? And why were Ruth and Tommy a couple when it was Kathy and Tommy who had the real bond?), they could all be explained away by the thought that the trio of characters had a very limited view of life given their upbringing within a solitary place, cut off from the world, their only exposure to the world at large coming when they were 17 years old and living in the Cottages with older “veterans” who sort of modeled how to behave (Of course, the veterans modeled themselves after characters from television shows…). All the trio knew was taken from what had been spoon-fed them over the years.
There’s a sort of emotional detachment within Kathy that narrator Rosalyn Landor brings out quite well. She has warm tones, and whereas we hear Kathy as she’s shocked out of her complacency every now and again and is confused or furious, for the most part, Landor has Kathy as sort of musing her way through life. The only real emotion Kathy allows herself is when she closes her eyes, grasping a pillow to her chest, and she sways to the song, “Never Let Me Go.” She imagines a woman who has finally gotten what she’d never truly hoped to have and is grateful, but oh so fearful it’ll be taken from her. Landor brings this verrrry important image to life and keeps it alive in our memories until the grand reveal at the end. Then we hear what Madame, who saw Kathy that one day and started weeping, was really thinking. It’s a trifle gut-wrenching, but Landor carries it well, with Kathy’s detachment even tho’ it’s a bit of a sucker punch. Plus Landor handles Tommy’s innocence and rages rather well, and she didn’t relay Ruth as a soulless wench, as in: I did NOT hate Ruth, tho’ I did find some of the things she said to be despicable.
Okay okay okay! Yeah, I wanted to smack Ruth upside the head when she shamed people in public, but I think I was s’posed to feel that, yes?
I’ll admit that I found the story to be disturbing, and I kept thinking of modern meat and egg and dairy farms. The public WILL have its demands met, WILL have its technological advances to keep meeting those demands, all whilst kinda sorta remaining willfully ignorant. As long as we don’t see or question, as long as we’re able to hold ourselves up as The Only Sentient Creatures with Souls, we can well nigh do what we please. This all was so much the question: At what point do we say Life has a right to its own Life? When do we acknowledge that there are dreams and feelings all around us? At what point do we become complicit?
There’s an emotionally provocative scene where Ruth is breaking down, realizing lost dreams, and she shrieks that they’re all made of filth, taken from the dregs of society. Would we do that? Clone the “worst and worthless” so that we might feel okay about annihilating them for our own gain? It’s said that Ishiguro wrote this when cloning was really picking up steam, and it was rather his response and questions for society: Is this where we’re going? Is this what we’d do?
All in all, a thought-worthy audiobook with seasoned narrator Rosalyn Landor at the helm. It doesn’t have the good ol’ wallow in emotions that I’m usually partial to, but somehow, somewhere along the way, I started feeling really morose, which is always a good thing. Ishiguro only has the two emotional breakdowns (The final one near the end), and they’re noteworthy, but all through the book, the story leaves line after heartbreaking line.
Not everyone’s cup o’ tea, this character reflecting on life, this character who’s learned to manage the emotions in other people lest they freak out as they must do what they were created for. This character who’s learned to manage her own emotions, not ever want what she can’t have.
…Until she does…
At which point? Yeah, I’ll admit it. I choked up. But isn’t that just like me?
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