Never Let Me Go

Author: Kazuo Ishiguro

Translator: Gita Yuliani K.

Publisher: PT Gramedia Pustaka Utama

Publication Date: September 2011

Pages: 358

A science fiction novel by Japanese-born British author Kazuo Ishiguro. It was shortlisted for the 2005 Booker Prize (an award Ishiguro had previously won in 1989 for The Remains of the Day). The novel is set at the fictional Hailsham boarding school in East Sussex, England. Hailsham is not a normal boarding school. The students there are not allowed to have any contacts with the outsiders.

Narrated by Kathy, --ex Hailsham student and now 31-- she reminds her time at Hailsham. The time when she developed a close friendship with Ruth and Tommy. Kathy tells the story in three sections that chronicle the phases of their lives. It's started with their childhood, their adult life --around age 16-18-- when they moved to the "Cottages", a residential complexes where they begin contact with the external world and the last part is the most important part for them. The time to become Donors that will make their lives complete.

The author's rich description of the relationship among Kathy, Ruth and Tommy makes the novel more like a drama instead of  a science fiction. Over the course of entire novel, it requires the readers to understand what is implied as much as what is told. The pace of the novel is slow and the details seem trivial but patient readers will be rewarded for their efforts with a very touching ending. You will be curious who Kathy is. When it's eventually revealed that the children are clones created to provide vital organs for non-clones, it just leaves you with mixed feeling, the ethic of science, the moral and the like.

This novel works beautifully, giving it a quality that keeps me thinking about its plot, characters and themes long after I finished its final page.