Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As with Margaret Atwood's "Hand Maid's Tale", "Never Let Me Go" begins like a contemporary mainstream novel. It takes awhile for the reader to realize that the world described is not the "real world". Gradually, you catch on to the differences and learn the rules of this world, as the characters themselves learn. The mis-direction starts on the page before the first chapter, where Ishiguro indicates that the scene is "England, late 1990s". Everything is plausible. No scifi technology would be needed to have led to this alternate world. No major cataclysmic change. Just a subtle change of direction -- quite natural, quite credible, and hence foreshadowing a dismal future we may yet encounter. From the first page, you feel that something is just a little bit off. Even the typeface is disconcerting, with a lowercase "a" that looks more like a handwritten "a" (an "o" with a tail coming off to the right), instead of the usual printed "a", as here). You also quickly notice that the narrator is a bit obsessive and oversensitive, over-interpreting every look and gesture and event. And by keeping this up, over the course of the book, the author manages to completely redefine the basis of communication and the texture of life, including how to rad body language and context. Ishiguor gives an otherwodly aura to ordinary situations. You sense that there is always a mystery-to-be-solved behind what is happening, what is described, what is interpreted. Oridinay terms are used in extraordinary ways (cf. 1984, but far more subtle) -- carer, donor, possible, guardian, deferral become laden with new and sinister meanings, hinting at the difference between these people and ordinary people, between their world and ours. What we wind up with is a bizarre coming-of-age love story, combining innocence and horror, in a situation where the simplest everyday events and decisions take on heroic implications. This is one of the best novels published in the last 100 years. Don't miss it.