Join me in reading Never Let Me Go on its 20th anniversary!

A month of trying something new by rereading something twenty-years old

My current copy!

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. The novel came out when I was eight years old, but I first read it in high school, when I plucked it at near-random from my school library shelves and devoured it in a few days. I cried that first time. It remains a novel I have returned to, again and again and again.

So I am going to try something a little different on this Substack: in honor of the novel’s twentieth anniversary, I’m going to re-read it here. Along with my re-read, I’m going to write a weekly post for the duration of this series: close-reading the text, bringing in outside sources, or discussing whatever comes to mind.¹ Ahead of each reading, I’ll also post the questions for the reading ahead that I’m considering myself.

Why join me?² If you’ve never read Never Let Me Go, you should know that it is the most-read book by Nobel Prize for Literature-winner Kazuo Ishiguro. In so many ways, it encapsulates the themes that thrum through his work: memory and the past, what makes us human, death and aging.

Both my debut novel and my manuscript in progress grapple with the idea of memory and narrative, and I have returned to Never Let Me Go so many times to see how he does it. It’s also a masterclass in voice and interiority, in well-paced information reveals, in character… the list goes on.

It may also feel quite topical: it touches on capitalism, and technology, and the way we treat some human lives as disposable, and what it means to be a human treated thus, and what it means to be human at all.

You might regret a lot of things in your life (Ishiguro’s work is all about things you might regret, actually) but I can promise you that you will not regret reading this novel. The twentieth anniversary is your chance. Join me!

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The Schedule

According to this schedule, each week requires about 50 to 100 pages of reading, which seems eminently doable, in my opinion. I plan on releasing my post on Tuesdays.

• Tuesday, May 13: Kick-off, coinciding with the publication date of the twentieth anniversary edition!

• Week One (Tuesday, May 13 to Monday, May 19): Chapters One through Four, ending at Chapter Five

• Week Two (Tuesday, May 20 to Memorial Day Monday, May 26): Chapters Five through Nine, ending at Part Two

• Week Three (Tuesday, May 27 to Monday, June 2): Chapters Ten through Seventeen, ending at Part Three

• Week Four (Tuesday, June 3 to Monday, June 10): Chapters Eighteen through the end

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Suggested Reading Before You Start

Kazuo Ishiguro Reflects on Never Let Me Go, 20 Years Later (LitHub)

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1. I find this endeavor terrifying, but I am engaging in what international relations scholars describe as locking-in credible commitments: that is, I am making this commitment credible by generating audience costs. Now that I’ve publicly issued the promise to read this novel and write about it, I will face some kind of cost if I fail to follow through. Try it with your writing goals, maybe?

2. I am also a little afraid that no one will join me, but this exercise will also be good for me as a reader and a writer.