Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Never Let Me Go


Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. New York: Vintage International, 2006.

[Book cover credit: www.alibris.com]

Genre: Science Fiction

Annotation:
This is a narrative from the point of view of Kathy, a graduate of an exclusive boarding school in England. She questions her alma mater and later finds that her concerns grow deeper than she had ever imagined.

Booktalk Review:
As an adult, Kathy looks back on her childhood at an exclusive boarding school. She wonders what makes her and her friends, Ruth and Tommy, so special.
"If you believed yourself special, you should have at least asked. You should have gone to Madame and asked."
As soon as I said this--as soon as I mentioned Madame--I realised I'd made a mistake. Ruth looked up at me and I saw something like triumph flash across her face. You see it in films sometimes, when one person's pointing a gun at another person, and the one with the gun's making the other one do all kinds of things. Then suddenly there's a mistake, a tussle, and the gun's with the second person. And the second person looks at the first person with a gleam, a kind of can't-believe-my-luck expression that promises all kinds of vengeance. Well, that was how suddenly Ruth was looking at me, and though I'd said nothing about deferrals, I'd mentioned Madame, and I knew we'd stumbled into some new territory altogether. [p.231]
Read it to find out more about this mysterious circumstance and if she is on to something.

Awards, Recognitions, Honors, etc.:
  • Shortlisted for the 2005 Booker Prize
  • Shortlisted for the 2006 Arthur C. Clarke Award
  • Shortlisted for the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award
  • A New York Times Notable Book
  • Time magazine named it the best fiction novel of 2005
  • One of TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005
  • ALA Alex Award in 2006
Check out Kazuo Ishiguro speaking about Never Let Me Go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SmuYqKeTTs


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