Gotta Love Those Books

I finished reading the book Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, which is about a girl named Kathy H. and how her life at Hailsham set her up for the future.

Hailsham is a school secluded away from the outside world with students more special than anywhere else. They are always reminded how important they are and how important their work in art, writing, and poetry is for Madame’s Gallery. The students never asked questions about why they had to do art, why are they learning more about one thing then another, or what’s going to happen when they leave the school. Asking those questions was thought to be embarrassing or awkward to the other students around, but as Kathy H. and her friends began to grow up they got curious. It seemed there were more secrets hanging around Hailsham that the guardians would never discuss or only just allude to in a passing conversation. As more theories and rumors came to minds of the students as they left the school and grew up, they could only wonder about their existence/future and why their artwork was so important for their souls and for Madame.

DON’T KEEP READING IF YOU ARE GOING TO READ THIS BOOK BECAUSE I GIVE STUFF AWAY!

Ishiguro’s central theme throughout the whole book was proving that the students were actually students and had hearts and souls like everyone else. At this point you are probably like what the hell is she talking about, but that’s because you don’t know that the students of Hailsham were clones. They didn’t all look the same, or act the same, but they were all created for the same purpose (which I’m not going to tell you, so read the book yourself). Ishiguro told stories of these kids growing up to show that they acted like normal people and shouldn’t have been hidden away from the outside world. Ishiguro told Kathy’s stories about her friends, artwork, and emotions, to prove that these clones were just like the humans controlling the school and should’ve had the rights that all the normal people had. In developing this central theme, Ishiguro used the literary element of setting. He set the story in the future world and made the school seem as isolated and hidden away as possible. This set up the story for him perfectly to be able to talk about why these students should not have been treated as creatures or clones, but true humans living with the rest of society just for a different purpose.

I actually really enjoyed this book. I am not much of a reader, but I was able to get through the book at an efficient pace and although it wasn’t always a nail biting, page turner (like the Hunger Games), it was still interesting. I think Ishiguro wrote the book really well and I would definitely consider reading more of the books that he wrote. Ishiguro wrote the book just as if Kathy H. was telling you the story herself in a flashback and I liked that part about it. Yes, I know that is called writing in first person, but he didn’t just write it like every other first person book; he wrote it with language that someone like Kathy’s character would use and also in like a laid-back-having-a-cup-of-tea kind of talking way. I also felt like Ishiguro included the right stories in the beginning about the students being at Hailsham. What I mean is that, he didn’t mention pointless stories about when they were kids and different events that happened just to make the book longer. He had stories about them that either added to the events in the book right then, or that the reader would look back to and say “oh, yeah that’s why that event in their childhood was so important.” I did not find very many things that I thought were weak with the book, but one thing I did not like were some of the details he added about certain things. I know that in some cases details are needed to set up a scene or describe an event where the details of the surroundings were super important, but in some cases the details were just unnecessary. At some points in the book I almost felt like I was reading about every single step they took or when they turned left, right, up, down, backwards, and so on. By the end of the book, I was just realizing how unimportant the details were and I would just skip the paragraphs that had no important information what so ever in them.

I felt after reading this that it was a great, well written book, but not a book for everyone. I would suggest this book to people who enjoy more of a serious book with some romantic aspects because it is definitely not a boyish, rough and tough action novel or a book with a happy comedic uplifting story.