Never Let Me Go (novel)

Plot

The story begins with Kathy, a carer, talking about looking after donors. She has been a carer for almost twelve years at the time of narration, and she often reminisces about her time spent at Hailsham, a fictional boarding school in England, where the teachers are known as guardians. Along with classes, they often emphasize the importance of keeping healthy to their students—smoking is considered to be taboo, almost on the level of a crime, and working in the vegetable garden is compulsory. The curriculum appears to be like that of any other school, but there is great encouragement for the students to produce art. The art is then displayed in an exhibition, and the best artwork is chosen by a woman known to the students as Madame. The students speculate that she keeps their work in a gallery.

The story revolves around three Hailsham students: Kathy, and two others, Ruth and Tommy, who develop a close but complicated friendship. Kathy develops a fondness for Tommy, looking after him when he is bullied and having private talks with him. However, Ruth and Tommy begin a romantic relationship during their time at the school that continues when they leave.

In an isolated incident, Miss Lucy, one of the guardians, talks to the students about their goals and their true purpose: to provide organs to others, a cycle of donations that will consume their lives. This results in Miss Lucy's removal from the school, though it causes only subtle disturbance in the students, who were raised with the notion.

At age 16, Ruth, Tommy and Kathy move to the Cottages, a poorly maintained residential complex where they begin contact with the outside world. Ruth and Tommy continue their relationship, and Kathy has some sexual, but shallow, relationships with other men. Kathy is concerned that her sex drive is abnormal, and Ruth deliberately encourages her to feel this way when she confides in her.

Two older housemates, who had not been at Hailsham, tell Ruth that they have seen a "possible" for Ruth, an older woman who resembles Ruth and thus could be the woman from whom she was cloned. As a result, the five of them go on a trip to see her, but the two older students first want to discuss a rumour they have heard that a couple can have their donations deferred if they can show that they are truly in love. They believe that this privilege is for Hailsham students only and so wrongly expect that the others will know how to apply for it. They then find the possible, but the resemblance to Ruth is only superficial, causing her to angrily wonder whether they are all cloned from "human trash".

During the trip, Kathy and Tommy separate from the others and look for a copy of a tape that Kathy had lost when at Hailsham. Tommy's recollection of the tape and desire to find it for her make clear the depth of his feelings for Kathy. They find the tape, and then Tommy shares with Kathy a theory that the reason Madame collected their art was to determine which couples were truly in love, citing a teacher who had said that their art revealed their souls. After the trip, Kathy and Tommy do not tell Ruth of the found tape, nor of Tommy's theory about the deferral.

When Ruth finds out about the tape and Tommy's theory, she takes an opportunity to drive a wedge between Tommy and Kathy. Shortly afterwards she tells Kathy that even if Ruth and Tommy were to split up, Tommy would never enter into a relationship with Kathy because of her sexual history. A few weeks later, Kathy applies to become a carer, meaning that she will not see Ruth or Tommy for many years.

Ten years pass without Kathy seeing Ruth or Tommy, during which time Hailsham closes. Ruth's first donation goes badly and her health deteriorates. Kathy becomes Ruth's carer, and both are aware that Ruth's next donation will probably be her last. Ruth suggests that she and Kathy take a trip and bring Tommy with them. During the trip, Ruth expresses regret for keeping Kathy and Tommy apart. Attempting to make amends, Ruth hands them Madame's address, urging them to seek a deferral. Shortly afterwards, Ruth makes her second donation and completes, an implied euphemism for dying.

Kathy becomes Tommy's carer and they begin a romantic relationship. Encouraged by Ruth's last wishes, they go to Madame's house to see if they can defer Tommy's fourth donation, bringing Tommy's artwork with him to support their claim that they are truly in love. They find Madame at her house, and also encounter Miss Emily, their former headmistress, who lives with her. They reveal that Hailsham was an experiment to give clones humane treatment, in contrast to other institutions. The gallery was used to help get funding, by conveying to the outside world that clones are in fact real humans. They are not able to give deferrals, and never had that power.

Tommy knows that his next donation will be his last, and confronts Kathy about her work as a carer. She resigns from being Tommy's carer and does not see him again. The novel ends with Kathy alone after Tommy's completion, and she later visits Norfolk to reminisce about her memories that she feels she will cherish.

Title

The novel's title comes from a song on a cassette tape called Songs After Dark, by fictional singer Judy Bridgewater. Kathy bought the tape during a swap meet-type event at Hailsham, which she often used to sing to and dance to the chorus: "Baby, never let me go." On one occasion, while dancing and singing, she notices Madame watching her and crying. Madame explains the encounter when they meet at the end of the book.

In another section of the book, Kathy refers to the three main characters "letting each other go" after leaving the cottages.

Characters

Reception

Critics disagree over the genre of the novel. Writing for The New Yorker, Louis Menand describes the novel as "quasi-science-fiction", saying, "even after the secrets have been revealed, there are still a lot of holes in the story [...] it's because, apparently, genetic science isn’t what the book is about." The New York Times book reviewer Sarah Kerr wondered why Ishiguro would write in, what she dubs, the "pop genre—sci-fi thriller", claiming the novel to "quietly upend [the genre's] banal conventions." Horror author Ramsey Campbell labelled it as one of the best horror novels since 2000, a 'classic instance of a story that's horrifying, precisely because the narrator doesn’t think it is.' Joseph O'Neill from The Atlantic suggested that the novel successfully fits into the coming of age genre.

O'Neill wrote that "Ishiguro's imagining of the children's misshapen little world is profoundly thoughtful, and their hesitant progression into knowledge of their plight is an extreme and heartbreaking version of the exodus of all children from the innocence in which the benevolent but fraudulent adult world conspires to place them." Theo Tait, in a review for The Telegraph, has a more general perspective of story: "Gradually, it dawns on the reader that Never Let Me Go is a parable about mortality. The horribly indoctrinated voices of the Hailsham students who tell each other pathetic little stories to ward off the grisly truth about the future – they belong to us; we've been told that we're all going to die, but we've not really understood."

Adaptations

Mark Romanek directed a British film adaptation titled Never Let Me Go in 2010. In Japan, the Horipro agency produced a stage adaptation in 2014 called Watashi wo Hanasanaide (私を離さないで), and in 2016 under the same title TBS Television aired a television drama adaptation set in Japan starring Haruka Ayase and Haruma Miura.