Never Let Me Go Audiobook By Kazuo Ishiguro cover art

Never Let Me Go

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Never Let Me Go

By: Kazuo Ishiguro
Narrated by: Rosalyn Landor
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About this listen

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • From the acclaimed, bestselling author of The Remains of the Day comes “a Gothic tour de force" (The New York Times) with an extraordinary twist—a moving, suspenseful, beautifully atmospheric modern classic.

As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were.

Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.

©2005 Kazuo Ishiguro (P)2005 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.
Coming of Age Genetic Engineering Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Science Fiction Thriller & Suspense

Editorial reviews

As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.

Critic reviews

  • National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee, 2005, Fiction
  • Alex Award Winner, 2006

"Stunningly brilliant fiction....A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience." (Kirkus Reviews)

"Ishiguro's elegant prose and masterly ways with characterization make for a lovely tale of memory, self-understanding, and love." (Library Journal)

"So exquisitely observed that even the most workaday objects and interactions are infused with a luminous, humming otherworldliness.....Ishiguro spins a stinging cautionary tale of science outpacing ethics." (Publishers Weekly)

"So exquisitely observed that even the most workaday objects and interactions are infused with a luminous, humming otherworldliness. . . . An epic ethical horror story, told in devastatingly poignant miniature. . . . Ishiguro spins a stinging cautionary tale of science outpacing ethics." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Perfect pacing and infinite subtlety. . . . That this stunningly brilliant fiction echoes Caryl Churchill’s superb play A Number and Margaret Atwood’ s celebrated dystopian novels in no way diminishes its originality and power. A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Ishiguro’s provocative subject matter and taut, potent prose have earned him multiple literary decorations, including the French government’s Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and an Order of the British Empire for service to literature. . . . In this luminous offering, he nimbly navigates the landscape of emotion—the inevitable link between present and past and the fine line between compassion and cruelty, pleasure and pain." —Booklist

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What listeners say about Never Let Me Go

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  • 4 out of 5 stars
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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Won't Let You Go

Don't think that you'll be able to finish this masterpiece and then forget about it. This remarkable novel is too bizarre and unsettling to easily put out of your mind. I couldn't. Perfectly written, expertly read, and very, very sad.

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47 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

thought provoking

This is a very thought-provoking book. It raises a lot of questions about human nature and morality. It is also a very sad tale about people, ultimately. It's a must read.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

So much missed opportunity

Once it's fully revealed the purpose of the pupils at the school serve for society, there was so much opportunity to expound the story and make it great that was just foregone. The passive acceptance of the students feels so illogical and wrong that it required me to just accept some sort of reality where this would be acceptable and I couldn't wrap my mind around it. The opportunity was there to tell a much more inspired story but instead the author remains in the mediocre by allowing all these characters to just accept a reality that goes against the crux of human nature and that made it so unbelievable that it robbed a lot of enjoyment of the story. I lost my ability to relate to the characters and root for them because their actions went so against the grain of humanity and human nature. The story did keep me entertained but this feeling of being unbalanced where the characters acceptance seems so illogical prevented it from being a great story or believable.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

The ending tells all - savor the wait.

Details written in an engrossing style, captures your imagination, creates images and makes you remember images from your own life too. At moments I was tempted to set this aside as dreary -- so glad I didn't. Speaker was perfect. if your ready for depth, and not in need of uplifting at the moment, try this book. Makes you ponder what kindness really is -- and the darkness behind silence and condescension.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Highly recommended

Are we really so far away from this? I wonder if we would ever value our families so much that we would allow this to happen. Often through this book I thought, "This could never be." But I am not sure.

Regardless of the moral questions, this book is wonderful. The writing is spectacular and the narration is flawless. It comes highly recommended.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Good enough

Any additional comments?

My friend recommended this to me with the promise that it would make me cry. It didn't, so that was disappointing. The story is solid, but slow. It's conclusion is more of a slow unraveling of layers instead of a real climax. Overall it was a good story, but it didn't break my heart.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

POWERFUL!

I found this book hard to set aside, you see i had see the movie and it had left me wanting questions unanswered as to the nature of all the inner workings of what the author was sharing. I think any reader of books,one who has a real love fr them should read or listen to this . I find myself asking how would i have handle many situations,and what it must have been like as the author being totally immersed in this endeavor. This book hit chords in every feeling part as well as the question, Is this a reality for some today. As i said powerful and not something you can turn off in your being after the last sentence.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Narrator was impressive

The narrator did a fantastic job with the different voices. She even did a great French accent!

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Interesting Concept...

...but just didn't work for me. With the word "humanity" being kicked around in the description for this book, I started it expecting to learn something about me, about us as a society. Instead, I found myself not only not caring about the characters, but not even liking them.

I expected more from this novel and from Ishiguro and while it was certainly enjoyable enough to get through, I learned nothing and came away with nothing from it.

If another author had written this as a first novel, I would definitely not have been this critically harsh and would have rated this book much more highly. But coming from the author of that masterpiece Remains of the Day, I'm afraid that Ishiguro may have set so high a standard for himself that even he cannot sustain that level of writing.

Unfortunately the narrator did little to endear the characters to us. Her voice is a cold, impersonal, cut glass British accent. To make it worse, she must be at least middle aged, while the main character is just a young woman, further distancing herself to the reader.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Weird

"Much ado about nothing" ...beautifully written and narrated but... So unreal (spoiler)...can't understand that not one person thought of escaping.

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1 person found this helpful