Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is like any other English boarding school novel, only the students are preparing to spend their adult lives in two specific careers, first as carers, then as donors.

That much is revealed in the opening parts of the story, so I’m not spoiling anything. We know from the start that something unusual is going on at Hailsham, but our narrator, Kathy H., doles out the details slowly in this slow-burn science fiction novel.

Here Nobel Prize-winner Ishiguro visits some of his favorite themes: what makes us human; how we construct memory and how memory shapes us; how we justify our crimes against others. “I wasn't sobbing or out of control,” Kathy H. thinks on the last page, but I was.

This is my fourth Ishiguro novel. I rank him among my top ten living writers. Scratch that: I just jotted a list of my top fifteen living writers, and Ishiguro belongs in the top five. I feel myself becoming a better person in real time as I read his books, feel my humanity growing.

The audiobook is capably narrated by Rosalyn Landor, if that is your preferred medium.