All I can do is say it was one of the most powerful books I’ve read in the last couple of years. I really don’t want to say much more if you haven’t read it. It stays with you for a couple of days after you put it down. By the end you’re like: Okay, thanks, never want to live THERE, thank you very much. And piece by piece, the picture becomes clearer and clearer. You start to piece together the world she inhabits. Not sci-fi outer space words – but words that you think you know what they mean, but they just sound ODD in her context.
She doesn’t bother to explain it to us, not for a long while – because she assumes we know. What does she mean, she’s a “carer”? That’s in the first sentence. But she uses certain words in a context that makes me confused. He launches into the story, it’s a first-person narration – our narrator is a woman named Kathy, and she’s looking back on her childhood at a boarding school. Ishiguro, again, amazes me with his talent. It’s the strangest sensation, reading that book – I know I’m not writing about it very well, but oh well.
But up until that point, I was frozen in horror and disgust. I am very glad I knew nothing, I didn’t know the secret of the book, I didn’t know the plot even! It’s a terrible story, it really made me sick – and then suddenly, with a whoosh, on the last page – I found myself weeping. I had somehow managed to avoid all spoilers – not even a HINT of anything made it to my ears (which is kind of extraordinary, considering how much I read book reviews, etc.) But I read one post about Never let Me Go in June (I link to it above) – went out, bought the book, and read it immediately. It is the kind of book that is dependent on the reader NOT knowing anything going in. I hesitate to even say anything about it, for fear of giving stuff away. I read Never Let Me Go this year – posted about it here. Excerpt from Never Let Me Go – by Kazuo Ishiguro
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