Just Finished Reading: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Kathy, Ruth and Tommy have always known that they’re special. Growing up in the exclusive English school at Hailsham they have been taught from an early age that they must take the greatest care of themselves and each other. Only slowly do they find out what is in store for them when they leave their safe harbour and make their own way in the world. Looking back on those days 31 year old Kathy (played by Carey Mulligan in the 2010 movie adaptation) must come to terms with her knowledge of all of their fates as she cares for Ruth (Keira Knightly) and her long love Tommy (Andrew Garfield) as they play their part in society.

[SPOILER – For those who haven’t read the book or seen the movie and want to I’d advise you to stop reading here – SPOILER]

OK, has everyone logged off who doesn’t want to hear the rest of it [pauses, looks around]. Right……

I found this book to be quite a struggle but not because it was difficult to understand or because it was badly written per se. I was irritated by its style first and foremost. Told in flashbacks it meandered all over the place as the narrator Kathy related stories of her youth and her relationship with Ruth and Tommy. Quite quickly we find out the secret of their existence (OK you were warned that there would be spoilers). They’re all clones. Now this didn’t come as a huge shock to me as I’d heard about this particular angle before I read the book. What did surprise me much more was that the clones themselves didn’t seem particularly bothered (or interested overmuch) by that news. There was some childish nonsense about finding the real-world person they were a copy of but only to discover how things might have turned out if they didn’t have that other thing hanging over their heads – because being clones was only part of it. They were actually being specifically bred to provide the larger society with organ donations which would eventually, and inevitably, kill them. What did they do with this news? Absolutely nothing except hold on to the vain hope that if they could prove they were in love that they’d get some kind of stay of execution for a few years before calmly being led off to slaughter.

A theme throughout the book was the idea that the children were encouraged to produce works of art and that the best of these – poetry, paintings sculpture – would be taken away each year for reasons unknown. Near the end of the book Kathy and Tommy find out what really happened to them. They were exhibited to patrons who were interested in the welfare of the clones and wanted to prove that they were practically human so should be treated in a humane fashion not, apparently as they were elsewhere, like cattle. This whole theme made me more than a little angry. To me it was bloody obvious that these clones were less than human because, after being informed that they would be killed at the whim of a largely uncaring society they did not even conceive the idea of rebelling against it. They calmly went on with their lives and right up to the moment of their inevitable death on an operating table remained proud of their sacrifice for the greater good. Where was a Clone Resistance I asked myself? Why no suicides as acts of aggression against the system that bred them? But of course the novel had no political and a minimal sociological aspect to it. With them it would have been completely different and would have actually deserved the name of Science-Fiction.

Reading some of the reviews on the back I was struck by one from the Sunday Times which described it as “A novel with piercing questions about humanity and humaneness”. I think they missed the point. I don’t think it was about how we treat people at all. I think it was about how we treat our animals that provide us with food and clothing. Do we treat them well right up until the moment we kill them and eat them or do we treat them like things bred to be eaten and, therefore, hardly to be thought of. Or do we actually treat our fellow creatures with somewhat more consideration and not eat them in the first place? Kathy, Ruth, Tommy and the rest were cattle and behaved like cattle even assisting the State in their own slow executions. Like cattle they were rounded up, herded and killed whenever someone needed a heart or a kidney or a few feet of intestines. Maybe the book did exactly what it meant to do – it got an emotional response out of me. It certainly did that! It also means that I will never read anything else by this author.