never let me go ✵ k.ishiguro

Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it.

Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.
(Source: GoodReads)

I know what you're thinking. The first review EVER posted on this blog is a f-ing Nobel Prize winner (Ariana's 'Thank You, Next' plays softly in the background). "Okay, Havana Banana, if that's even your real name (it's  not), we get it. You read Nobel Prize winners, as do at least 50 billion other humans" (right?!).

Hear me out. Sometimes books written by a Nobel Prize winner in literature, are books that you read, just to have read them. To know what the buzz is about, to get down with the ... middle-aged adult people that has an academic degree (now drowning in debt) and separate plastic from the rest of the garbage. Why did this author win? Are the books any good? And also, why hasn't Murakami won yet?????? (Am I making any sense?? No? Didn't think so).

If the fact that I've read a Nobel Prize winner isn't impressive enough, please fasten your seatbelt and let me impress you further. Just to let you (and this is gonna blow your mind), I read Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" in High School YEARS BEFORE he won the Nobel Prize in Literature (!!!!) HAH, suck on that you middle-aged-recycling-uni-graduate. Okay, enough of the rambling, on to the review, shall we?

"Never Let Me Go", wow, where do I even start? This is one of the few books I've read more than once, more than twice actually. It's a heartbreaking and a beautifully written novel that will stay with you for a very long time. When I first read it, it was like nothing I'd ever read before. It's original and multilayered, Ishiguro is a master of story telling. This novel is a must-read for this generation and the next.

The story jumps in time but overall I'd say we get to read mainly about the past of our main character Kathy H., our narrator. Just a few chapters into the story, the past of Kathy H. unravels before us. Kathy H. spends most of her childhood and early teenage years in the boarding school 'Hailsham'. The more we get to read about it, the more certain we get that this might not be your average boarding school. Hailsham is, just like its students, a very special boarding school. The novel definitely has a dystopian tone to it, this is mainly due to well, Hailsham, and the destiny that awaits all its pupils.

What captures me the most are the characters. Kathy, Tommy, Ruth, you really feel for these characters in the most heartbreaking way. The bond between these three is stronger than steel. Though them we get to experience first love, we get to experience a friendship that never fades, how faith and hope can vanish into thin air within seconds and how cruel and unfair life can be. The novel also addresses moral issues as well as a person's value.

All I can say is, read it if you haven't and if you have, read it again (but for God's sake don't watch the movie!!!)

Happy reading!
You find the book here: Bokus, Adlibris, Akademibokhandeln or at your local public library or local bookstore