Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (Vintage Books) ~Janet Brown
Kathy is a caregiver, or as she calls herself, a carer, driving around England to nurse a select group, the donors. Coming from a privileged background, she prefers to work with donors who also grew up at Hailsham, a place that fascinates others who didn’t have that as their past history.
In a matter-of-fact voice, Kathy explains why Hailsham is enviable. Not a school, not an orphanage, it blends elements of both on a large estate where the children live, taught and are brought up from early childhood until late adolescence. The estate is presided over by a number of instructors who give their young charges an education laced with freedom, medical attention, and meticulous care.
The children have known no other home. They know they are special and that they will become donors when they reach adulthood, but beyond that they’re consumed by childhood games, adventures, and friendships. Only one teacher breaks into this idyllic world, telling them “we weren’t being taught enough about donations and all that.” When she hears two boys discussing how they plan to move to America when they grow up, she intervenes. “You’re special. Your lives are set out for you. None of you will go to America..you’ll become adults and you’ll start to donate your vital organs.”
Slowly the children realize who they are. They are clones, without families. As they get older, they begin to search through magazines, hoping to find their “possibles,” their replicas, the people from whom they were cloned. Friends become family and Hailsham holds their only history.
As a carer, Kathy sees the lifespan of the donors, with them when they reach “completion” after their fourth donation, or even before that. It’s her job to keep her donors happy, well-healed, and ready for their next step. But among those who grew up at Hailsham, there’s a belief that there could be another chapter. If a relationship passes a test administered by Hailsham’s headmistress, the couple could be given time to be together, a break from their fates, before their donations bring them to completion.
Reading Never Let Me Go twenty years after it was first published is an eerie experience. Enshrined as one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of the 21st Century, it’s taken on the hallowed glow of a classic. Over the past two decades, AI and humanoid robots have made the idea of human clones almost quaint. And yet unlike Orwell and Huxley in their bleak, dispassionate visions of the future, Kazuo Ishiguro has given his characters warmth, depth, and an enduring humanity that makes their fates tragic, although they don’t see them in that light. For these children, this is the normal progression of a life. Raised in isolation, they’re have a vague awareness of how humans live and die, but their only reality is donation and completion.
However, when Kathy and Tommy, a boy she grew up with at Hailsham, fall in love as adults, they yearn for more time together and begin to pursue the childhood rumor that this might be allowed to happen. Even though Kathy will soon become a donor and Tommy is nearing completion, they allow themselves dreams of a future, for the first time.
“We gave you your childhoods.” With that statement comes a horrible reality that will strike at the soul of every living parent. We have given our offspring that. Now what will be their futures?