I've just read Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. I began it knowing nothing whatever about it, and declined a couple of offers to be told. I'm glad I did, because the way in which the book's central conceit is imparted to the reader little by little contributes to its chilling effect. While I was reading Never Let Me Go, I came across the series of pieces about it by John Mullan (1, 2, 3, 4) in the Guardian Review. I put them aside until I'd finished.
Then I read the Mullan pieces and I found that Ishiguro's account of what he was doing in the novel cut across my sense of why the story is as powerful as it is. That's not so strange, since the intent of the writer, though obviously relevant to understanding his meaning, is not necessarily authoritative in judging the achievement of what he writes. Still, the discrepancy between Ishiguro's intention and my appreciation of Never Let Me Go is something I'd like to pursue.
[NB: Spoilers follow. If you're intending to read the book and don't want to know about it before you do, look away now.]
I read Never Let Me Go for what it overtly is: a story about young people, clones, produced specifically so that in due course their organs can be harvested for the benefit of other, ordinary, people. The harvesting, it should be said, leads eventually to 'completion', that is death, for these 'donors'. Even just by way of simple storytelling, the novel is finely constructed; this is a gripping read. But its deeper effectiveness, to my mind, comes from the author's skill in conveying to us the sense of what it means, and of how it might feel, to be someone whose life is comprehensively not their own - to be an instrumentalized being, one who will eventually be thoroughly used, exploited for the well-being of others. As I've already said, read like this the story is chilling.
Now, here's Kazuo Ishiguro himself (see link 3 above):
I found that having clones as central characters made it very easy to allude to some of the oldest questions in literature; questions which in recent years have become a little awkward to raise in fiction. "What does it mean to be human?" "What is the soul?" "What is the purpose for which we've been created, and should we try to fulfil it?" In books from past eras - in Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, say - characters would debate these issues for 20 pages at a time and no one would complain. But in our present era, novelists have struggled to find an appropriate vocabulary - an appropriate tone, perhaps - to discuss these questions without sounding pompous or archaic. The introduction of clones... as main characters can reawaken these questions for modern readers in a natural and economic way.So as not to be misunderstood here: the two ways of reading the novel are not incompatible; it can be an allegory about the exploitative use of people, doing violence (here extreme violence) to their autonomy, and at the same time raise questions about the human condition much more generally. But, for my money, read in the latter way Never Let Me Go would be a failure. You'd do better sticking with Dostoevsky - or with Saul Bellow or Ian McEwan, for that matter. The novel's main characters aren't given sufficient depth - of character or perception or wisdom, and understandably not, given their age and their circumstances - to make this tale a rewarding reflection on the meaning(s) of being human. There is indeed - again understandably, given their circumstances - an innocence and sometimes a superficiality in the intellectual and emotional responses of Kathy, Tommy and Ruth. They never entirely escape the school atmosphere in which their early lives are shaped.
All the same, Never Let Me Go is a thoroughly absorbing book. If I'm right in what I've said, there are good reasons to read it; and if I'm wrong, then there are more good reasons than the ones I've given.