The Perks Of Being A Book Addict discussion

This topic is about
Never Let Me Go
ARCHIVE - BOTM discussions
>
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
date
newest »




I loved this book. The beauty of this book is the understated way the subject matter is handled. Kazuo Ishiguro talks around the entire subject without really talking about what happens to everyone.
The real question is how can a society allow to happen what happens and how do the main characters think it is OK. The main premiss is never questioned and that is the beauty.

(view spoiler)


I would never consider this a YA book. I can see this falling into a coming of age story, much like Summer of '42, but I do not consider that YA either.
I find it very interesting that issue you had with the book is the very reason I loved the book. It is the very fact that the premiss for the story is never questioned and accepted by all is why it is truly creepy. It leaves you wondering why and how it started, which is not explored and that is its very beauty.

(view spoiler)




1. Kathy introduces herself as an experienced carer. She prides herself on knowing how to keep her donors calm, "even before fourth donation" [p. 3]. How long does it take for the meaning of such terms as "donation," "carer," and "completed" to be fully revealed?
2. Kathy addresses us directly, with statements like "I don't know how it was where you were, but at Hailsham we used to have some form of medical every week" [p. 13], and she thinks that we too might envy her having been at Hailsham [p. 4]. What does Kathy assume about anyone she might be addressing, and why?
3. Why is it important for Kathy to seek out donors who are "from the past," "people from Hailsham" [p. 5]? She learns from a donor who'd grown up at an awful place in Dorset that she and her friends at Hailsham had been really "lucky" [p. 6]. How does the irony of this designation grow as the novel goes on? What does Hailsham represent for Kathy, and why does she say at the end that Hailsham is "something no one can take away" [p. 287]?
4. Kathy tells the reader, "How you were regarded at Hailsham, how much you were liked and respected, had to do with how good you were at 'creating'" [p. 16]. What were Hailsham's administrators trying to achieve in attaching a high value tocreativity?
5. Kathy's narration is the key to the novel's disquieting effect. First person narration establishes a kind of intimacy between narrator and reader. What is it like having direct access to Kathy's mind and feelings? How would the novel be different if narrated from Tommy's point of view, or Ruth's, or Miss Emily's?
6. What are some of Ruth's most striking character traits? How might her social behavior, at Hailsham and later at the Cottages, be explained? Why does she seek her "possible" so earnestly [pp. 159-67]?
7. One of the most notable aspects of life at Hailsham is the power of the group. Students watch each other carefully and try on different poses, attitudes, and ways of speaking. Is this behavior typical of most adolescents, or is there something different about the way the students at Hailsham seek to conform?
8. How do Madame and Miss Emily react to Kathy and Tommy when they come to request a deferral? Defending her work at Hailsham, Miss Emily says, "Look at you both now! You've had good lives, you're educated and cultured" [p. 261]. What is revealed in this extended conversation, and how do these revelations affect your experience of the story?
9. Why does Tommy draw animals? Why does he continue to work on them even after he learns that there will be no deferral?
10. Kathy reminds Madame of the scene in which Madame watched her dancing to a song on her Judy Bridgewater tape. How is Kathy's interpretation of this event different from Madame's? How else might it be interpreted? Is the song's title again recalled by the book's final pages [pp. 286-88]?

It was interesting how Madame and Miss Kelly both expressed a good deal of sympathy, etc. However they were both clearly repelled by Kathy and Tommy.


7. One of the most notable aspects of life at Hailsham is the power of the group. Students watch each other carefully and try on different poses, attitudes, and ways of speaking. Is this behavior typical of most adolescents, or is there something different about the way the students at Hailsham seek to conform?"
The beauty of this book is the ordinariness of the situation until you realize what is actually happening. These children sound no different than what you see in today's children with cliques and groupings. In every group, there is a subset of the ostracized for whatever reason and it is hard on them. Tommy is made fun of and Kathy comes to his rescue to help him blend in and become accepted. Sounds like a normal child to me. Kathy fancies Tommy and Ruth takes him away out of jealousy. Sound like anybody you know when you were kids?

7. One of the most notable aspects of life at Hailsham is the power of the group. Students watch each other carefully and try on different poses, attitude..."
That is a great insight. I heard this book described once as showing the banality of evil. That is a great example that you give.



No let it go slow. that is the intent of the book to drag you through so slowly.



Kaya wrote: "In the end, I wasn't impressed either. The writing is so emotionless and without any real conflict and resolution. I expected more considering the topic."
This is the very beauty of the book. I expect that you two have missed the entire point. The reason that book is written the way it is because Kazuo Ishiguro used the very mundane to show they very banality of evil. Evil practiced by man is not always so forth coming. He used the narrative to show how something so terrible can be so normal. Kathy never questioned whether what is happening to them is wrong. the reasons you two hate the book is what makes the book so beautiful.
It is the emotionlessness that makes the book so beautiful. The idea of the mundane is what makes this so horrible. Kathy is not questioning what is actually happening, only that are they human. The idea that they should rise up is never a consideration and that is the beauty of this novel as well as what makes it so horrible. They never question their situation.

Kaya wro..."
Yes, Papaphilly. That's what I think too. When I was reading it I wasn't sure how I felt. I didn't feel much. Then after I was done, there was a bit of a lag, and then it hit me what had happened in the book and I felt sick. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I think a great book does that to you, it changes you and sticks with you.
I think if something blocks that process between author/reader then it would be easy to think this book did nothing or had some other flaw. That is the point of the book, strangely enough: the banality of evil.

I disagree. Every single thing said before the revelation at the end was hinting at and building up to the end. And of COURSE they didn't explicitly state anything before then, because first of all, she was telling it from the perspective of the past when she didn't know, and second of all because if she went and gave it all away there would be no point in continuing to read. Like you said, she was building a mystery.
You said that there wasn't enough world building, and yet I thought that was what was so beautiful about the book. I thought it presented the world in a very skillful way. I felt like I understood what these children were like, and what it was like in their sheltered world within the walls of Hailsham. I can hardly believe you were reading the same book if you felt like it was left vague.
And the last issue I have with your comment is that it is absolutely not YA in any account.
The only thing I felt was particularly unrealistic or unbelievable, was how the heck do these people survive while missing whole vital organs? But if you can just accept that as a fact of the book, I think it was very well written, answered all questions built up throughout the first two parts, and in the end left you with additional questions about what it means to be human and the value of life.

I think they could survive because a donor can survive missing a kidney, a liver transplant, a lung, can donate their eyes, missing a spleen, missing other infrastructure like skin, bones, marrow, parts of the digestive tract, etc.

Good point. You're right. They specify in the book that it is vital organs, so I don't know about those last things, but kidney, liver, lung...then maybe the last would be the heart.

3. Now that Hailsham is gone, she's clinging onto the memory because it's not just a place, but a part of her, who she is. It's important for her to find people from Hailsham so she won't lose it, so it won't just disappear. Especially when you learn that it's not just a place, but an attempt at making life better for these unfortunate souls.
I wouldn't say it gets more ironic to be called lucky, her situation never changes. But what's revealed to the reader makes them realize that, just because she was treated humanely growing up, does not rescue her from her inevitable, painful end.
Kathy, as a Hailsham student, was given an opportunity to live a normal childhood life. She was more or less free from the worry of what was going to happen to her. In a sense, Hailsham gave souls to its students by treating them like they have one. Hailsham can't be taken away because it is Kathy's soul, and it is her memories which she has narrated to her audience in this book. Perhaps by speaking about it, she's raising awareness of the issue and something can come of it.
4. They associated creativity to expressing emotion, and emotion to having a soul. They wanted to show that donors were more than just inhuman test-tube clones, and they deserved to be treated humanely.
6. Ruth is constantly seeking approval, she wants not only to fit in, but to stand out and be popular. She tries so hard to surround herself with people who like her, and to make herself sound well-liked. I suspect it is because deep down she really feels lonely and unloved, and probably unlovable. She's not good with any kind of criticism, because she knows it's true and probably hates herself for it. I think she was looking for her possible because she wanted to feel like she wasn't alone, like someone out there was just like her, and maybe she wanted to see that that person was okay.
8. They seem upset because their project ended in failure, and that in the end regardless of how "educated and cultured" their students are, they still have the same fate awaiting them.
9. I don't know the significance of the animals specifically, but I think maybe he continues to draw them because he's proud of them, maybe he wants to leave something behind, maybe he wants to leave behind proof that he had a soul.

Anyways, I agree that the beauty of the book lies in how completely emotionless everyone is about the situation, like they don't know what's going to happen to them...only they do, and somehow they just don't question it. In the end, Tommy even asks Kathy why she won't just quit being a carer and donate already. Like ending her life would be less torment than living it. They seem to have been raised with no value of life, which is so heartbreaking, and unsettling.

Kaya wro..."
I understand that what happens in the book is terrible, but I do not see any beauty in the way he wrote it. You could almost visualize the main characters as robots. Also, the relationship the main characters had was very strange. It's a weird random concept to even write a book about.

7. One of the most notable aspects of life at Hailsham is the power of the group. Students watch each other carefully and try on different poses, attitudes, and ways of speaking. Is this behavior typical of most adolescents, or is there something different about the way the students at Hailsham seek to conform?
While this is typically normal for adolescents, what occurs in the novel is quite different. The only adults they know are their teachers, who are authoritative figures rather than role-models. As we grow up, we tend to mimic our parents, trying to appear older and wiser. In the novel, it's almost as if the children aren't sure how to...be. It's not simply about them trying to fit in with the "in crowd" but fitting in with humanity as a whole.
Books mentioned in this topic
Summer of '42 (other topics)Never Let Me Go (other topics)
Authors mentioned in this topic
Kazuo Ishiguro (other topics)Kazuo Ishiguro (other topics)
Kazuo Ishiguro (other topics)
As a child, Kathy � now thirty-one years old � lived at Hailsham, a private school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe that they were special and that their well-being was crucial not only for themselves but for the society they would eventually enter. Kathy had long ago put this idyllic past behind her, but when two of her Hailsham friends come back into her life, she stops resisting the pull of memory.
And so, as her friendship with Ruth is rekindled, and as the feelings that long ago fueled her adolescent crush on Tommy begin to deepen into love, Kathy recalls their years at Hailsham. She describes happy scenes of boys and girls growing up together, unperturbed � even comforted � by their isolation. But she describes other scenes as well: of discord and misunderstanding that hint at a dark secret behind Hailsham’s nurturing facade. With the dawning clarity of hindsight, the three friends are compelled to face the truth about their childhood–and about their lives now.
A tale of deceptive simplicity, Never Let Me Go slowly reveals an extraordinary emotional depth and resonance � and takes its place among Kazuo Ishiguro’s finest work.