Magic is when you’re reading one thing, but something much deeper is going into your head.
Reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s NEVER LET ME GO, I was first caught up in the story details, the intimate memories of the main character, Kathy, and the vivid pictures Kathy paints of her childhood, her friends, her teachers - and the mystery that surrounds them all.
As the story moves along, I find I’m unable to put the book down, even though Kathy is still describing her life’s memories. There’s something about Ishiguro that makes her memories become something more. (I can’t give details because of a spoiler situation.)
I can say that Kathy is a true innocent. And when she tells us of her life, we can only see the more global picture later on, as the picture widens. The profound implications of Kathy’s life don’t hit us right away. And because we see the world through her innocence, the final, nightmarish impact is even more shocking.
This was my first Kazuo Ishiguro book, and now I intend to read them all!
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The Remains of The Day hits on similar themes. Self-abnegation and its perversion of life.
I loved this book and found it particularly haunting. I also highly recommend “The Remains of the Day”, both the book and the movie. Both are excellent, but the book, again, has a very haunting quality to it and in a similar way, to me, as “Never Let Me Go”.
It was okay, not what I expected it to be. Quite honestly, I thought it was a little boring. It was more about their day to day life, and I felt like the whole being cloned thing was forgotten at times. It was very mundane, and I felt like it could’ve happened in a different context and I wouldn’t have changed THAT much. Don’t get me wrong, it’s well written, just didn’t go the direction I thought it would so I guess it’s my own fault for setting myself up for disappointment lol.
If I recall, part of his point with the story is for the reader to ask “why are these people not more concerned about what’s going on and just jabbering on about relationship drama, music, or other mundane things?” Because that’s what we do with our short lives. We only get some 60-80 years and we spend it frivolously like the characters in the book.
So, this one is about cloning?
I am sensing a theme in his book. I read only one so far, Klara and the Sun, and that one was something.
I would say that Never Let Me Go is similar to Klára and Sun in a sense that it’s a book with sci-fi premise but the sci-fi aspect is not the main focus of the story’s. If you enjoyed Klara and the Sun, definitely read this book as well!
i need to give this book another chance
oh my, what a book.
spraking of ishiguro, any pressing recommendations for his other works?
An Artist of the Floating World
The Buried Giant. One of my favourite books.
I like his work ‘The Pale View of Hills’ too. I think this one resonates with Asian culture set in Europe and how people uprooted from their culture face difficulties. I’ve read this a long time ago. I might revisit it.
That’s a great book.
I highly recommend The Remains of the Day as that is not only my favorite Ishiguro book, but one of my all-time favorite books ever. Don’t let the premise dissuade you from reading it because it’s about an English butler. His story is an extremely powerful and moving one.
The Remains of the Day also features a very astute and observant narrator like Kathy H. in Never Let Me Go.
Because they are so hyper-sensitive and observant, it ironically can occasionally cause blind spots, not of the world they see, but in how they see themselves. They have a hard time reversing their astute narrative eye toward their own physical body and toward their one inner self – which is a kind of subtle subversion of the unreliable narrative trope.
They are actually extremely reliable narrators, but they have trouble looking at themselves with the same kind of intense gaze because it’s like staring into the sun – it’s hard to do that for too long because it burns and hurts.
That’s why they must indirectly look at themselves, like using mirrors to look at the sun.
You often see them focused on looking at mirrors or reflections, or noticing how someone, or themselves, are framed by something, like a doorway, or a window which highlights the other person’s gaze at them, or their own gaze looking at themselves or how they gaze at someone else. Both books really focus on perception and the acting of looking.
A person staring at you can also act like an emotional mirror, revealing what they really think of you, especially when they think you are unaware that they are looking at you.
In Never Let Me Go, Kathy H. often notices how people look at her, sometimes from afar away window.
In one big moment, Kathy H catches the true reaction of someone’s reaction toward her by catching their gaze in a mirror.
This is a kind of doubling of mirrors. The physical mirror showing the woman looking at Kathy H. Also the emotional mirror of the person’s look of horror on their face revealing what they really see when looking at Kathy H. I forget, but maybe the women might have also been standing in a doorway too, which adds another layer of emphasis to the woman’s gaze at Kathy H.
BTW, Never Let Me Go is heavily influenced by Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, as Flaubert makes heavy using of framing and reflections, like even using someone’s eyes as a literal mirror for the self.
Some of the scenes, the way they are constructed, in Never Let Me Go almost seem to be taken directly from the Madame Bovary which was intentional. I don’t know if you’ll like Flaubert’s novel, as it’s a very unusual novel, and the characters aren’t necessarily likable, but it’s amazingly modernist for such an old book.
I enjoyed reading it as a companion piece to Never Let Me Go, as it made me appreciate both books on a deeper level.
Here’s a great interview with Ishiguro on the Bookwom podcast talking about Never Let Me Go (as well as some connections to Madame Bovary). (FYI, the play button for the podcast can be sort easy to miss on the website, so just look for the play button icon with the word “listen” underneath it).
I read NLMG first too, and loved it so much I decided to give Remains of the Day a shot even though I didn’t think I’d enjoy it, being a period piece. I adored it. Top 3 all time favourite book of mine. Ishiguro is a true genius.
The first 30 pages or so of The Remains of the Day were a bit slow and felt like a guide to being a butler. Once I realized what the book was doing it was fantastic. One of the best books I ever read.
I think I had the same initial reaction. Honestly don’t remember why I kept reading, as I kept asking myself why this book was so critically acclaimed. Who wants to read the recollections of a butler on a leisurely drive through the countryside?
Then, like you said, it sort of clicks and I was just pulled into the story. It was gradual subtle thing, much like Ishiguro’s subtle restrained writing style that tries not to call attention to itself, much like how the butler is trying to restrain himself and always stay calm and measured. By the end, however, I was flipping pages like an action-thriller, reading non-stop wondering what would happen next. This happened to me with some Jane Austen novels too.
Which book would you recommend to someone who has read both Remains and Never Let me Go? I read both the books after seeing a post on this subreddit and both have left me wanting for more.
It depends on what you liked about those books.
If you want more Ishiguro, then maybe try his first book A Pale View of Hills so you can see how he started, or Klara and the Sun, his most recent book which was well received. I haven’t read it though but I plan too.
Some other works are more experimental / surreal though like The Unconsoled and Buried Giant, so they are polarizing, but I like that kind of writing too. If you decide to read Unconsoled, try reading/listening to Ishiguro’s short story first, which I linked in this comment here. Be sure to listen to the post-story discussion as it’ll help you prepare to read The Unconsoled.
What I particularly like about Ishiguro is his exploration of narration in fiction (how the story is told to you by a narrator, in Isiguro’s case, it’s usually a 1st-person narrator), and that the"truth" that they see is just a kind of story that can be easily altered by memory and by one own subjectivity (how they interpret those events). These narrators often have a kind of flaw.
Try Blind Assassin or Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood with are both fantastic books. Atwood often plays with narration and uses language in interesting ways. Both books involve an attempt at organizing the past, similar to Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day.
In Oryx and Crake, Atwood mixes both present-tense first-person narration with omniscient third-person narration. It portrays a man in a post-apocalyptic future trying to tell himself a story about his own past. When inside his mind, the narration shifts to him as a storyteller and it switches to third-person narration. There are also people within his narration that tell their own story of the past occasionally, so the book has many layers.
Blind Assassin is a great mix of different genres: gothic mystery, romance, adventure and a touch of sci-fi. The book deals with narration and storytelling as well. Atwood likes to play with language in more overt ways than Ishiguro but she’s just as powerful. Maybe try this book first.
The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje is similar to The Remains of the Day because it also has a flawed narrator. It’s about a boy setting sail from Sri Lanka to England, and the story shifts between the ship and his adult years. I haven’t read this yet, but it’s been on my to-read list for a long time, and it’s often suggested as similar to Ishiguro’s books.
Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes is also good as well, and also has a narrator trying to make sense of the past through his recollections. It’s a short read, almost like a novella rather than a novel.
“A Bullet in the Head” by Tobias Wolff is one of my favorite short stories ever. It’s about a man recounting his entire life in a split second. This story hits you hard. You can find it in his short story collection The Night In Question: Stories but it’s also been included in many “best of” anthologies.
“Death by Landscape” by Margaret Atwood – I know I’ve mentioned her often, but this is another story that absolutely blew me away. It also deals with recollections, about how this one painting conjures up all these memories for the narrator, in a very haunting and evocative way. It starts slow but like The Remains of the Day, it gradually builds up the tension. You can find the story in many anthologies as well, and also in her Wilderness Tips collection.
For something more conventional, try:
Of Human Bondage by William Somerset Maugham
Like Water Like Elephants by Sara Gruen
I was really moved by both novels. Gruen’s book alternates between the past and present, and you learn a lot about Depression-era America. It’s an interesting combination of history, adventure and light romance.
Maugham’s book is really old but it still resonated with me: a story of a young man’s life in the early late 1800s / early 1900s, a rare peak at what life was truly like in those times in the US and Europe.
I love both but I don’t know that I would have ever put them together myself, thank you so much!!
The ending of the book stuck with me for days
Is Ishiguro similar to Murakami? I love Murakami and have been thinking of getting into Ishiguro
Maybe just superficially. Both craft worlds and stories where you know something is concealed, and that thing is probably dark and scary. In Murakami novels the reveal tends to be something exotic and weird. In Ishiguro it’s often some reality or truth that was right there all along but nobody could or would see it. That’s a super broad generalization from reading about 4 Murakamis and about 3 Ishiguros, but they all fit the pattern.
Ishiguro is more of a British writer than a Japanese one.
Funny things is, Murakami is seen as a not-very-Japanese writer, too. (Even though he is Japanese, of course.)
Very different. Sir Kazuo Ishiguro is British, as is his perspective. He’s totally worth reading but nothing like Murakami.
I love Ishiguro. He brings this kind of magic in all of his books. 💛
I designed an entire class just so I could teach this book. 😁
I love this book! It’s a real heartbreaker, but in the best possible way.
I completely resonate with your experience of reading “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro. Like you, I was initially engrossed in the rich details of Kathy’s memories and the mysterious atmosphere surrounding her life. As the narrative unfolded, I found myself captivated by Ishiguro’s ability to transform those memories into something much deeper. It’s as if, through Kathy’s innocence, a more profound and shocking reality is gradually revealed. I couldn’t put the book down either, and I’m eager to explore more of Ishiguro’s works after this compelling introduction.
I’ve discover Ishiguro’s this year with Klara and the Sun that I absolutely loved so ended up reading all of his books this year. I only have The Unconsoled left before the end of the year. It was a really great reading experience!
Though because Ishiguro tackles similar themes in his work, some of them might have been more impactful if I spaced them out. However I will be reading them again for sure. The Buried Giant was the most different for me. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but because I love fantasy and history, I ended up really enjoying it.
I think Klara and the Sun is still my favorite for now but his work definitely feels like I want to go back to it for years to come!
The Hunger Games, Book Theif, and this one are among my “In One Sitting” list.
I just could NOT put this one down. It’s mysterious and ultimately heartbreaking. You keep thinking “Maybe it won’t be like this” but it IS like that. 😭