The Works of Kazuo Ishiguro

[welshcorgigirl]

I just finished reading Never Let Me Go, and I'm feeling as if a lot was left out. What the hell were people giving up during their donations? Why was Kathy such a spineless goon around Ruth?

[Deleted]

welshcorgigirl said:

I just finished reading Never Let Me Go, and I'm feeling as if a lot was left out. What the hell were people giving up during their donations?

I read this when it came out, and I felt the same way. (Bear with me, my memory may be faulty.) I think people were donating organs and tissue, depending on what the recipient needed.

I wasn't a huge fan of it, and didn't get why all the reviews were so gushing. It was good, but it just wasn't clear enough for my taste.

[dancedancexenu]

I hated Never Let Me Go. As I mentioned in one of the other threads, I am horribly pedantic when it comes to science in novels and at the end I was just like "oh fuck no, I hate this book. This book is wrong, wrong I say!" I wanted so desperately to like it, but it was just really incoherantly written and it wasn't skillfully written enough for anyone to really fill in the blanks.

The basic idea was that the school was set up after WWII as part of (what I think was) a large government conspiracy to provide organ and tissue donors to the middle and upper classes. The children are all cloned (yes. Cloned. Freakin' cloned!) from the lowest rungs of society (at least that's what I gleaned from that one girl's freak out) and then they are brought up to be coerced into donating their organs. They donate until they die. I thought it was crap. First, cloning. WWII. Uh huh. Totally, totally brought me out of the moment, and it was even something that caught the eye of my housemate--and he's a music major. I found the climax to be completely anti-climactic. They find the governess's (or whatever she was called) house and the headmistress just happens to be waiting inside, conveniently concealed in the shadows so that the governess can wheel her out to deus ex machina the entire plot? Fabulous.

I hated that book. I liked The Island more than I liked that book.

[Deleted]

I loved Never Let Me Go, but yes, there were certainly plot holes. That said, I read some reviews of it before I read it so the cloning surprise was ruined for me. I just found it really sad and haunting. I wanted them to run off or rebel, but they were so conditioned to accept their fate it was like they never considered it.

But, Ishiguro can be really frustrating. I read When We Were Orphans a few years ago and found it riveting until the part where he returns to Shanghai and then starts fighting in the streets. Then he finds his mother in a brothel. The whole thing was just weird.

And don't get me started on The Unconsoled. Good Lord. I tried to read it for weeks and weeks and was about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through before I started to really suspect that the ending wasn't going to actually resolve anything. Let's just say I didn't finish it. Some of the situations were beautifully written and parts of it still stick with me, but what a maddening book.

[linared]

I loved Never Let Me Go, but yes, there were certainly plot holes. That said, I read some reviews of it before I read it so the cloning surprise was ruined for me. I just found it really sad and haunting. I wanted them to run off or rebel, but they were so conditioned to accept their fate it was like they never considered it.

I love this book as well. Now that I think about it, I realize that there were large plot holes. But I think I was too caught up in the writing and the characters to pay attention to that part. I have a copy of The Remains of the Day but I haven't read because I am afraid that it will be too sad.

[Margo]

I read Never Let Me Go about a week ago and felt neutral about it - neither loved it, nor hated it. I think that book had a lot of potential, had the author included more technological details, but it was wasted. The relationships between the three main characters were, by themselves, not enough to make it great. If the book had that, plus a technological background, it could have been wonderful.

[Deleted]

I did like it, though it was a rather sad book. I guess I read too many sci-fi books when I was a kid, though, because I guessed that the secret about the cloning pretty early on. I was surprised about the outcome of their finally meeting with the old headmistress.