And Never Let Me Go

“It wasn’t that I thought I’d burst into tears or lose my temper or anything like that. But I decided just to turn and go. Even later that day, I realised this was a bad mistake. All I can say is that at the time what I feared more than anything was that one or the other of them would stalk off first, and I’d be left with the remaining one. I don’t know why, but it didn’t seem an option for more than one of us to storm off, and I wanted to make sure that one was me. So I turned and marched back the way I’d come, past the gravestones towards the low wooden gate, and for several minutes; I felt as though I’d triumphed; that now they’d been left in each other’s company, they were suffering a fate they thoroughly deserved.”

Before this, I’d never read an Ishiguro book before. I had always wanted to try Remains Of The Day, but that title always got to me. It always seemed a bit distant somehow.

Then one day I was at Borders, and I wanted to get the Borders panda plushie, called Beckett because it reminded me of someone, and they were having a promotion and I could get it for cheaper if I bought some books. On a whim, I decided to get my very first Ishiguro, and it just happened to be Never Let Me Go because (if memory serves) that’s all they had in stock. And I’m glad it turned out that way.

Never Let Me Go is a story set in a slightly fantastic 1990s England. I didn’t realise this at first. In fact, it took me a while to realise the premise of what I was reading. (Much to my embarrassment, it took me a bit of time to realise that I was not reading about ordinary nursing students.) Yet, beyond this strange setting, the novel works its way into being a story about love and friendship and the very nature of being. It’s a glorious book, written with a gentle elegance and a faint strangeness, and is clearly at its best when characters are forced to deal with living with respect to themselves and also each other.

At times it did feel as if the setting was a bit of a contrivance, which was a little jarring because I couldn’t help but feel a bit removed from it all whenever I thought about this. It just occasionally felt as if the story could achieve what it was intended to achieve without moving into such territory. But it was just a slight feeling, and it didn’t happen very often.

The pages leading up to the conclusion did seem to me a little deus ex machina-ish. I didn’t quite like one portion of it because it reminded me of the overly talkative part The Matrix just before the finale. It just seemed disconnected somehow. Maybe it was the whole gigantic thematic sequence that it tried to have. It seemed to overstretch, to extend itself into an area that it didn’t do so well. Or maybe it was how the section came across to me like the big reveal in some crime novel when it really wasn’t one. That said, that felt like more of a blip than anything else in an otherwise remarkable stretch of writing. The conclusion itself was very elegaic and proper, and I didn’t feel let down one bit.

It’s a gorgeous book. Its finest moments are in the delicate bits, when the frailty of the characters is undeniable and their confusion or futility is reflected in Ishiguro’s wonderful prose. These are the points at which the novel proves most revealing. These are the portions that elevate the novel into its own special realm of greatness.

And with that, I suppose I’m done gushing. What a great way to start the reading year.

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