The narrator of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go - our host on a gently devastating literary journey - starts by simply introducing herself.
"My name is Kathy H.," the novel begins. "I'm thirty-one years old, and I've been a carer now for over eleven years."
This simplicity shadowed by a sense of foreboding - what exactly is a carer? - sets the mood for the novel, which was released in 2005 and made into a film last year. Ishiguro keeps us in the dark for the majority of the story; though he drops clues here and there, we rarely know more than his characters. Kathy's narrative voice aids in this deliberately measured denouement. Her honest, matter-of-fact tone - a blend of smarts and naivete - supports Ishiguro's calculated unfolding of plot and thereby increases the story's emotional impact.
Kathy gently guides us through the book's events by offering up her memories. She only occasionally gives us glimpses of her life in the present - which, an introductory note tells us, is 1990s England - preferring instead to reflect on the years she spent at Hailsham, a boarding school in the English countryside.
At Hailsham, we meet two central figures in Kathy's life: Ruth, dynamic and free-spirited but sometimes selfish, and Tommy, earnest and steadfastly loyal yet prone to flare-ups in temper. Ishiguro paints the experiences Kathy, Ruth and Tommy have at Hailsham in the manner of a typical coming-of-age story, but certain brushstrokes let us know not all is as it should be. For instance, we are told these children are donors - but Ishiguro intentionally leaves the nature of these donations murky.
Much of the novel's action takes place at Hailsham, but Kathy's memories trace her relationships with Ruth and Tommy from boarding school into adulthood. As the characters grow older, their circumstances grow more alien. We realize eventually that, despite the undeniable humanity of Ishiguro's characters, they are something a bit different.
Never Let Me Go is the 21st century's answer to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. But while Huxley's dystopic vision dealt with a distant future, the technologies Ishiguro describes are ones our society is perilously close to perfecting, giving the novel an intimate somberness that is difficult to forget.
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