latest read - never let me go

Apparently this story has been adapted to a movie. Surely I must have seen it on E! but it doesn’t ring a bell.

Anyway, I bought this book because it ran on a discount upon purchase of another item. I thought from the author's name that the book would be based in Japan. Well, it is not. Reading the first few pages, I was intrigued. What is this story about carers and donors?

Hmm…

The story is narrated by a character named Kathy H and the book is divided into three parts.



Part One –
At Hailsham until age 15-16.
It feel like a typical English boarding school for children where the focus was on arts and mainly on paintings;
A character known as Madame would come once a while and take away some paintings to be placed at the Gallery;
No one actually knows who Madame is and where or what the Gallery is;
Students are guided and taught by guardians;
Miss Emily was headmistress;
Miss Lucy was another guardian who was leaving hints here and there about what Hailsham really is and what the future of the students would be like;
No one noticed the hints except Kathy who noticed them but of course could not decipher them;
Here, she built a bond with Ruth and Tommy D.;
Yes, they learnt that they were brought into life to be donors for people outside of Hailsham;
It is a known and understood concept of life for the students of Hailsham that they we brought to life to donate their parts and then die.

Part Two –
At the Cottage (containing farmhouse, barns, outhouses, stables and other buildings);
You can leave to be carer at your own request;
Upkeep of cottage by those there but a grumpy old man named Keffer comes 2 to 3 time a week to look things over;
This is like a transition or stop-over- house before you become a carer or a donor.

Part Three –
Kathy has been a carer for quite a few people including Ruth and Tommy;
Eventually got together with Tommy;
Ruth passed away after two donations but before admitting that she was sorry for keeping Tommy away from Kath all these year and also, she managed to acquire and pass the address of Madame in order for Kath and Tommy to apply for several years of deferral from being a carer or a donor;
Discovery of Madame’s name i.e. Marie-Claude and that Miss Emily (the headmistress at Hailsham) who is now quite old and weakly, are actually working together with Madame;
At Miss Emily/Madame’s house they learned several things namely:
1. There were some quarters of the outside world who saw all clones existed only to supply medical science;
2. Hailsham was a place to bring up clones or students as they call them with much more dignity compared to other places;
3. It is Hailsham that was proof they these clones are human and the arts produced by students in Hailsham are proof that these clones/students in fact, do have souls;
4. But the maintenance of Hailsham failed when people who initially supported the ways of Hailsham now changed their minds and would rather prefer that these organ supplies are kept in the dark;

To complete means you’ve given all that you can give before you die; Tommy completed after 4 donations. Kathy lived on without the two closest people she knew.


The story is in same domain as the movie, The Island; same sort of things – human bred for parts.

I like the storytelling way of the author. Will definitely start a collection of his other novels.


Here's Wikipedia's overview of the plot of the story for the movie:

Kathy, Tommy and Ruth live in a world and a time that feel familiar to us, but are not quite like anything we know. They spend their childhood at Hailsham, a seemingly idyllic English boarding school. When they leave the shelter of the school and the terrible truth of their fate is revealed to them, they must also confront their deep feelings of love, jealousy and betrayal that threaten to pull them apart.

The film is narrated by 28-year-old Kathy H. as she reminisces about her childhood at Hailsham, as well as her adult life after leaving the school. The story takes place in a dystopian Britain, in which human beings are cloned to provide donor organs for transplants. Kathy and her classmates have been created to be donors, though the adult Kathy is temporarily working as a "carer", someone who supports and comforts donors as they are made to give up their organs and, eventually, submit to death. As in Ishiguro’s other works, the truth of the matter is made clear only gradually, via veiled but suggestive language and situations.


The film is divided in multiple parts, chronicling phases in the lives of its main characters.