Happy Release Day to the Twentieth Anniversary Edition of Never Let Me Go! As I wrote here, I’m spending the next month re-reading the novel in honor of its anniversary. Join me!
I first picked up Never Let Me Go in as a freshman or sophomore in high school, off the library shelf. It would have been five or six years after the novel’s 2005 release. I wonder now—what drew me to the book? Had I heard of it? Was I aware of Kazuo Ishiguro’s status and genius, or of his earlier work The Remains of the Day, or the Anthony Hopkins-starring adaptation of that novel? I probably picked it up because I’d seen trailers for the film adaptation of Never Let Me Go, which came out around that time, and starred Keira Knightley (big fan, still am).
Whatever my reasons for reading, that first time feels significant and momentous to me now. As the opening pages immediately reveal, the novel is constructed through the lens of an older narrator telling us about her life, beginning with her school days. (My forthcoming debut novel uses this lens, too, albeit in a more opaque manner.) When I first read Never Let Me Go, I was closer to the age of the school-days, and reading the voice of this older narrator was an exercise in imagination—in attempting to imagine what it would feel like to be someone reminiscing, to have a childhood about which to reminisce. Now, I am far closer to the age of the older narrator. Reading the novel this round has offered a strange, startling reminder of what it felt like to be in that imaginative place on the other end.
I can’t help but wish I’d written down notes of what I thought about this novel when I was fifteen. I remember being enthralled, heartbroken. But maybe those were those just the emotions that I tell myself I felt, because I that’s the narrative I like—myself, at fifteen, as an unusually prescient and mature reader. I suppose all this uncertainty is fitting for a book about the slipperiness of memory. In his Nobel Lecture, Ishiguro describes his writing on memory as “suggest[ing] the many layers of self-deception and denial that shrouded any person’s view of their own self and of their past.”
That’s what I am thinking about now, as I pick up the first pages:
Who is this narrator? Who is the intended “ear of the story,” that is, the narrator’s theoretical or actual listener (not us, the reader)? At what time, in relation to the story, is the narrator telling us this story?
Where and how do we begin to see these layers of self-deception or denial?
And a question for you in the comments: Is this a read or a re-read for you? If it’s a re-read, what do you remember of your first time?
Next Up: Chapters One through Four.
Extra Credit Reading
(I’m going to draw on some of these texts for my post next week!)
Me, Myself, and Aghghghgh! by Rebecca Makkai (Substack) and Tin House Live: Rebecca Makkai on the Ear of the Story (Podcast)
Nobel Lecture by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Schedule
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
I am baffled. It seems like I am not "in" on what everyone Katherine is writing to already knows.
Who are the donors and what are they there for? What are guardians? What is this weird place where bullying and nosiness seems so pervasive? It is an unsettling first few chapters.
Is the writer trying to make us feel what Tommy must be feeling?
It’s a first time read for me! So excited to dig in, I’ve been putting this one off for a while. Extra excited about the POV takeaways, too, since my own novel-in-progress uses a similar point of telling retrospective narration.