Customer Reviews
Beautiful writing about the dull lives of dull characters. - By: Mr. R. K. Haywood, 06 Jan 2009 
I read this through to the end. Was this really a Booker prize contender? Its dull, nothing ever happens. The heroine needs to get a life rather than reminiscing about the past (which was dull). Beautifully drawn characters do not compensate for dullness. Nothing happens. They drive here. They walk there. Its dull. The characters are dull. What makes it even worse is the conceit used again that goes: "this would have happened, except for what happened next". You read on expecting something to happen next - it doesn't. Did I say it was dull?
Conclusion: save yourself 3 hours & read the last 3 pages. Everything that goes before adds nothing.
Never Let Me Go - By: Mr. David Edwards, 29 Dec 2008 
An awful book which if you have any sensitivity about the 'human condition' you should avoid. A story which was always going to be rapidly overtaken by events (and is being) i.e. stem cell science. The premise is so mean & inhuman that you loath the guardians for taking partin it & the students for their passivity.
It will take me a long time to to erase the sickness/sadness from my memory. The reason being? Because initially you like the students; they are youngters at what seems to be an idyllic school & life seems to be fun.
And it is science fiction! It's fiction & science is involved.
Very readable but flawed - By: Alison, 29 Dec 2008 I really wanted to love this book because I really enjoyed reading it & found myself pulled through it, wanting to find out more. Therein lies the problem because I ultimately found that there are not enough answers, enough consideration of the background & detail of the story to give a reader enough satisfaction.
I agree with another reviewer that Kathy is a dull character who appears to have little substance to her & little to make you care about her. Ishiguro's writing is easy to read butin the later sections of the book I found much of the text being very repetitive - so much so that I even thought I was re-reading a couple of paragraphs when I had not read them before. The climax of the book includes a long monologue from a character which I found unrealistic - I couldn't imagine a 'normal' person speakingin that way. If I was Kathy I would have interrupted several times. The era that the book was setin felt very 1950's & yet it obviously wasn't, this gave me a feeling of disjointedness (intentional? Maybe).
The biggest problem I had with this book was why were the characters so accepting of their fate? They were not kept imprisoned, were not lackingin basic intelligence & yet none of them ran away or made any real steps to avoid donating. Why?! I thought about how I would feelin their position & I would never accept being forced to donate so why would these characters? They also did not seem to be prepared or told about the expectations for their donations until much later - if I was told at the age of 16 that I was now expected to donate my vital organs & die at an early age I'd be off!
The other major problem with the book is the ability for donors to give up to 3 live donations - what they were donating was never mentioned. Knowing a little about human biology this just played on my mind throughout. What were they donating that enabled them to survive such a number of donations? The glossing over of the willingness of the donors & the mutliple donations makes the whole book fall downin my opinion. A story does need to be largely credible for it to work, 'artistic licence' is not always enough to get away with such gaping holesin plot & background.
This book has left me unsatisfied because there are just too many questions that I want answered. Maybe this is what the author intended, but it just doesn't work for me.
Not natural Kazuo Ishiguro territory - By: J. M. Simpson, 03 Dec 2008 I read & loved "An Artist of the Floating World", so i thought I'd try another Kazuo Ishiguro. I was disappointed by this book, as the territory has been explored elsewhere ("Parts: The Clonus Horror", or "The Island", anyone?). I guessed the twists very early & was surprised at how clumsily they were delivered, which left me with the general style of the book.
Some reviewersin other media have commented that the author's distant style is a reflection of the restless detachment the characters feel from life, even during intense love. This seems like a poor excuse for using exactly the same style asin "Floating World"in a totally diffent setting. The characters all seem totally passive & very hard to believe. The odd three way romance at the end seems like a messy conclusion to an imperfect book.
Kazuo Ishiguro's skill seems to bein exploring quiet emotions over very short periods of time, especially nostalgia & regret. This was a brave experiment with controversial materialin a foreign setting. Although it was critically well received & successful I found it tiresome. It gets two stars instead of one as it did leave me with a sense of the futility of the whole human experience, although I'm not certain this was intended.
Written from a unique perspective - By: Man Without a Soul, 07 Nov 2008 
The way the novel is written is deliberately stuntedin order to build up the contrastin the reader's emotional response to what happensin the final chapter to that of the narrator Kathy. This makes for a tough journeyin getting to that point but I believed it to be worth the effort.
