Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

Hare and Hounds, Lansdown, Bath - October 12th 2011

Overall, the book seemed to get an enthusiastic reception, although as Mark Th pointed out early on, it is easy to see how it could divide opinion and we all had a sympathy therefore for Ras' disparaging remarks. In fact Ras' notes revealed some telling comments when he wrote "Alternatively....it is not about clones at all, but about society as a whole" and drew a possible comparison with the clones in the book and soldiers in the trenches of WW1 fighting without necessarily understanding why, but went on to conclude that he didn't think that was the aim of the book and therefore it failed for him (the rest of us thought he might be on to something until then...). In many ways this summed up what many others liked about the book in that it continually raised questions in the reader about what the book was really about, what was really going on, what significance did certain events really have etc.

Positives about the book included: The way it gave glimpses without revealing all; successful portrayal of a female protagonist by a male author; insight into the dynamics of power and what suppresses people and prevents them from fighting back; analysis of relationships in constrained situations; poetic and straightforward language that belied the complex undercurrents; ability of the book to chill and frighten with sinister insinuations; building a certain sense of suspense, which while some felt was false due to revelations made one third and halfway through the book, Chris B suggested must have existed as he had felt this strongly on his first read but the feeling wasn't there on the second read when he knew the outcome.

Negatives depended very much on your standpoint. Some really didn't care for the whole episode with Madame and Miss Emily (Mark T and Mark Th) while others liked this phase of the book (Rob). Some were frustrated by the refusal of the author to explain better what was going on (Ras and Mark T) while others liked the sense that Ishiguro was very deliberate about not giving much away and therefore provoked much parallel thinking by the reader (Neil). On a personal note I shall continue to wonder what was so enthralling about finding and seeing a grounded boat for some weeks to come and I think this is very clever.

Other questions people will be left searching fruitlessly for answers to include: why didn't these randy clones have sex with "normal" people - or why didn't "normal" people exploit the opportunity to have "risk-free" sex with clones (Chris W), why were all the roads so featureless (Steve), what makes someone a human being rather than a scientific creation (Rob), why was Kathy always a carer (Mark T) and why is Ishiguro still allowed to write books (Ras).

What is curious about the book is that while there was some consensus on the evening about people having enjoyed the book and found it to be a good book (Richard revealed that he had put off reading the last 50 pages to try and savour the ending), there was a quite a diverse range of feelings about what in particular people had enjoyed about it or been impressed with. While for some it was more about the writing style, for others it was the analysis of power and its ability to marginalise people and for others it was as much about what the book didn't say as about what it did.

Consistently high marking with one exception, averaging 7.23