Lisa Schiffren over at the Corner writes:
"Never Let Me Go" is written in Ishiguro's usual understated, wonderfully controlled, utterly sympathetic and seductive prose style. The story is told through the voice of Kathy, a young English woman now working as a "carer." It looks, at the start, like fairly standard reminiscense of her youth and a couple of close relationships she had at an exclusive English boarding school in the countryside. The school, Hailsham, seems a little odd. The students do too much art, not enough math or science or history. The teachers, known as guardians, constantly tell them that they are very special — and deliberately fail to tell them how or why they are. The author clearly intends readers to understand, subconsciously at first, then by dint of signs of cultural normality that he omits, finally by an increasingly menacing undertone, that this is not a normal place at all, and that the children being educated there are somehow outside of real society — and not just because they are orphans.
The book is, ultimately, a dystopian fantasty set in the last decades of the 20th Century — a time we know, not the alien, scientifically advanced future. Kathy and her friends are clones. They have been bred, by the government, for their body parts, which they will ultimately "donate." In fact, they will make donations until they
"complete." Some complete after donating one or two organs; others get as far as four. If you last that long, the doctors take everything else you have left as well. Being a "carer" for your fellow clones as they begin the business of dying is the only work available. It gives people something to do while waiting, on the shelf, as it were.
The expensive, lovely school that Kathy and her friends attended was part of a now ended experiment, a demonstration project, begun in the liberal 1970s intended to prove that clones have souls. That's why they were compelled to create art — to show what's inside. In the end, of course, it doesn't matter whether they do or not, since the larger society needs the organs to keep their own children, spouses, and family members alive. The idea of souls is too morally inconvenient. For that matter, society concludes that there is no reason to educate them. They need to be warehoused well enough to stay healthy. That's all.
The novel fails to answer a few questions, including why the clones, who are allowed out of their generally isolated campuses, and mostly know how to drive and have access to cars, don't revolt. Still, it is interesting enough to stumble across such a profoundly disturbing, ultimately pro-life novel, by a mainstream, extremely gifted literary novelist. Apart from recommending it in general, I think it would be an excellent addition to the list of books that American high school students are required to read. It makes a far more relevant point than many of the books in the current English curricula.