Never Let Me Go

Amber Herbert hat Never Let Me Go von Kazuo Ishiguro besprochen

Another Novel That Fails to Live Up to the Hype

3 Sterne

There are many glimmers of brilliance in this novel. The philosophical themes are prominent but obvious and lacking the depth needed to make an emotional impact. The characters are nuanced enough to tell them apart and give them personalities with which to fall in step beside, but I never once cared what happened to Kathy or Tommy or Ruth. The sci-fi elements are subdued, falling behind the themes of destiny and fulfillment. The prose is serviceable but nothing worth praising. Much like Klara and the Sun, I neither understand the hype nor believe it offers anything profound to speculative fiction as a whole. While not a terrible book, I stopped reading around the 50% mark.

Jim Brown hat Never let me go von Kazuo Ishiguro besprochen

what's happening at the edges

Keine Bewertung

In a recent review of The Remains of the Days, I said that Ishiguro's characters "revel in tedium," and this happens again in Never Let Me Go. This time, that tedium is their attempt to make sense of their lives. It's either unthinkable or too difficult for these characters to accept that they are just disposable, that they have no interiority. The book is evidence that they do in fact have that interiority, but the ending makes clear that there's a whole set of cultural machinery set up to treat them as resources rather than people.

In that review of The Remains of the Day, I said the book "is deep in the weeds of something that seems ridiculous while all of these other more important things are happening around the edges." I'm realizing that this is Ishiguro's modus operandi. He's not ignoring the important historical events - he's …

In a recent review of The Remains of the Days, I said that Ishiguro's characters "revel in tedium," and this happens again in Never Let Me Go. This time, that tedium is their attempt to make sense of their lives. It's either unthinkable or too difficult for these characters to accept that they are just disposable, that they have no interiority. The book is evidence that they do in fact have that interiority, but the ending makes clear that there's a whole set of cultural machinery set up to treat them as resources rather than people.

In that review of The Remains of the Day, I said the book "is deep in the weeds of something that seems ridiculous while all of these other more important things are happening around the edges." I'm realizing that this is Ishiguro's modus operandi. He's not ignoring the important historical events - he's just telling us what happens around the edges of those events.

schneuerwerk hat Never Let Me Go von Kazuo Ishiguro besprochen

None

4 Sterne

Ich war kurz davor, das Buch abzubrechen bis der große Twist eingesetzt und mich völlig mitgerissen hat.

Nathan John Cooper hat Never Let Me Go von Kazuo Ishiguro besprochen

A Memory

4 Sterne

Inhaltswarnung Spoiler Alert.

Apparently, when I finished this book, I never wrote a review... which is insane to think about but I'll try and write one now (despite it being around a year later). I loved this story. As a British teenager I have always loved the platonic and romantic dynamic that boarding schools encourage and, as such, thoroughly enjoyed how different relations played out throughout this tale. Furthermore, the addition of science-fiction elements allowed for the exemplification of narrative elements and enigmas ergo drawing the audience even further into the strange world of Hailsham. I will likely revisit this book many times throughout my life to feel what I felt whilst reading it for the first time; to walk the halls of Hailsham; to watch the football games on the field; to stare into the ambiguous forest across the accommodation windows.

Paranoid Fish

bewertet es mit

15. März 2019

Listen