Never Let Me Go Book Review

851 Words4 Pages
Lydia Kim DeKuiper English 363 4/5 B May 10, 2012 What Makes Us Human With doubt, I picked up this novel thinking I wasn’t going to get much out of it—I was completely wrong. This novel works beautifully on multiple levels, giving it a quality that kept me questioning its plot, characters and themes. Set in the 1990's, Kazuo Ishiguro does a great job at writing in a way that made me not want to put the book down. The first part of Never Let Me Go discusses the society Kathy and her classmates live under at Hailsham, the school she attends while growing up. During her time there, Kathy makes two close friends, Ruth and Tommy. Ruth is very impulsive; Tommy has an uncontrollable temper; and Kathy is calm, observant in the nature of human behavior. There are guardians, and one of them, Miss Lucy, comes to Hailsham and seems a bit different than the others. One day, she reveals to Kathy and the others a nasty secret about themselves. From here, the second part focuses on Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth's lives at the cottages and the struggles they run into. As Kathy has conflicts with Ruth concerning Tommy, as well as their world, she begins to consider the possibility of being a carer meaning that they spend roughly a decade looking after the other clones who are already having their organs collected. (R) As a carer, she must cope with the pain and loss of loved ones. At first, I was indecisive on what I exactly thought of this book until I finished the last few chapters which then changed my viewpoints. I saw that some reviewers didn’t like how there was no “twist” or “wow factor” towards the end, but honestly, does every book need it to be successful? Definitely not. What is the novel questioning exactly? In Never Let Me Go, the question this book raises is what “being human” is and treating “clones” lesser than humans. That’s what we should be asking ourselves, and
Open Document