'Never let me go' by Kazuo Ishiguro

i really enjoyed the alternate but plausible reality this book proposes. Clones for body parts. It reveals how we would rather ignore where the parts come from, ignore that the clones are people because to acknowledge that would mean giving up the medical benefits. I do agree it is in a similar genre to Handmaid's - but apart from that they are very different stories. the characters are well drawn and i felt a connection with the narrator. I read it last summer and i don't remember the end - so it may have lacked the wow factor. But then i do really enjoy stories that reveal slowly. Juliet

I can't bring myself to read this, partly because I keep getting him mixed up with the dude who wrote 'Norwegian Wood', and I couldn't get anywhere with that, and partly because the clones-as-spare-parts idea was done so damn well in Michael Marshall Smith's 'Spares' (even if he did brutally kill of Mr. Two.)

Me too. The first four books - Only Forward, Spares, One Of Us and What You Make It - are intensely macabre, surreal, funny and terrifying. So imagine my disbelief and despair when I discovered he is now writing generic crime fiction under the name Michael Marshall.

I'm going to bring my four years of University to bear on this mother and say I think Never Let Me Go sucked ass. I've really enjoyed other stuff by Ishiguro-san but Never Let Me Go is a tedious masturbatory crapfest, pure and simple. He got critical plaudits because the British literary fiction scene finally got those pesky ribs removed and has learnt how to suck its own dick. It doesn't need readers anymore.

I don't need to read it anyway. This chap on Amazon has kindly explained it all for me: "The lesson learnt is that the meaning of life is best achieved when we find joy, joy which comes from the soul. That joy from the soul surpasses blind faith, unsubstantiated materialism and an idealistic purpose of life that is based on discrimination. Ishiguro successfully weaved this story through characters that we can easily relate to, characters who in their pathetic states mirror man at the height of his false sense of achievement. In its portrayal of the futility of life, I got reminded of DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE, FRANKENSTEIN, UNION MOUJIKUN, CONSOLED. This is a recommended read for a deep-thinking person."