This book is not Ishiguro’s attempt at writing a sci-fi thriller. While sci-fi components are present in the story, they’re not really the focus, and you’ll likely find it lacking in that aspect if you’re a sci-fi purist.
This book is categorised as science-fiction, but if there’s one thing you shouldn’t do, it is to go into it expecting to find typical elements of the genre.
Except not really, because the story truly begins years down the road, when Kathy has already been working as a carer for more than eleven years. It’s where she meets her closest friends, Tommy and Ruth, and where our story begins. It’s where her mind most often goes back to. It’s within these grounds that Kathy H grows from a girl into a young woman. They just don’t have much to do with the world beyond the school grounds. They play sports and partake in all sorts of normal kid activities. The kids are cared for, treated well and educated in the arts. The only difference is that the children who attend here know there’s a reason they’re so special. Hailsham seems like your regular English boarding school. Just like, when you first start reading, all you really know is that you don’t know. Ishiguro never tells you what you should be afraid of, or downright horrified at, but you know. Instead, it bleeds slowly and assuredly into pages about a pleasant English countryside, or the peaceful grounds of a boarding school where a young girl sings along to the tunes of an old cassette tape. It’s so unsettling at times, you have to stop reading to catch a mental break from the horror – which, in the best Ishiguro fashion, is never obvious, never explicit, never in-your-face or overtly apparent. Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is the kind of brilliant, thought-provoking book you sort of wish you’d never picked up. Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro is at his best in Never Let Me Go – but beware, this book is not all it seems. Up this month is a modern masterpiece about memory, friendship, ethics, love and the human condition. The only determinant is quality: a book that makes life more vivid, more inspiring – a gifted piece of work you want to share.
Each month, American Express Essentials highlights one definitive literary work, old or new, and across any and all genres.
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