Never Let Me Go

De: Kazuo Ishiguro

Narrado por: Rosalyn Landor

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • From the acclaimed, bestselling author of The Remains of the Day comes “a Gothic tour de force" (The New York Times) with an extraordinary twist—a moving, suspenseful, beautifully atmospheric modern classic.

One of The New York Times’s 10 Best Books of the 21st Century • A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century • A Los Angeles Times Best Fiction Book of the Last 30 Years

As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were.

Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.

Nothing short of brilliant

I listen to audiobooks everyday. I've really enjoyed many but never have I been so enthralled as with this book. The plot & pace were mesmerizing as was the narrator. If you like an eery mystery with a lot of detail this is for you. If you want something very fast paced that doesn't make you think then don't bother.

Extraordinary fiction

One of the best books I've read. Ishiguro's literary finesse is impressive as he pulls the reader delicately into the story only to surprise you with what he's really up to. A masterful look at childhood and character turns into something much larger, a subtle and skillful look at how social values become hopelessly compromised. A love story that engages us with a coming moral dilemma.

Emotionally devastated, but it was worth it...

Would you consider the audio edition of Never Let Me Go to be better than the print version?

Oh, yes! The audio book was much better than the book. NOT that the book isn't fantastic, I'm sure, but the narrator's voice was so authentic. It was hard to know where the narrator's voice left off and where the story narrator (Katherine) began.

What did you like best about this story?

I think I loved the way that it completely made my head spin. This is a book it's going to take a long time to recover from.

Have you listened to any of Rosalyn Landor’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No, I haven't, but I'm going to be on the look-out for other things narrated by her.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Tag line? This book needs no tag lines.

Any additional comments?

PLEASE go read this book, even if it makes you cry and fall to the floor in exhaustion. It's all worth it.

I can’t decide ...

... if all the unanswered questions the reader is left with is a good thing or not. I enjoyed every minute of the book, but assumed all would be clear at the conclusion. I felt a bit bereft at the end.

A Tragedy Milled Down to the Texture of Our Lives

The pace of Never Let Me Go is metronomic. As such, the story is woven over a backdrop of slow, rhythmic drone. I have read here that it reads like a girl's diary. Having never read a girl's diary, I can only imagine it, but it may be an apt description. The point is, this droning pace is both deliberate, and essential to the story, and it works extremely well. A key to understanding the characters of the story - Kathy, Ruth and Tommy - is in understanding their place in life, and how normal and unquestioned that place is. It is the understated nature of their plight which leaves the reader/listener moved to the sympathies ultimately evoked. It isn't great tragedy. It's banal tragedy. Just as most tragedies we face in life are. And so it is tragedy milled down to the texture of our lives, and it is believable. The Sci-Fi and Socio-Alternate premises of the story, told in any more bombastic manner, could not possibly be accepted with the sense of truth Ishiguro manages to write. I fully accept the existence, and fates, of these poor creatures as real.