Dave Snowdon

I’m not sure what prompted me to take a break from my normal diet of science fiction and computer science books but something prompted me to pick Never Let Me Go off the shelf while browsing an airport book store and I’m so glad I did since it’s a superb work of fiction.

This is a story on many levels - there is love and friendship but I think there is also a level in which the story can be seen as warning on what happens once a society since starts assigning different rights to people because of an accident of birth.

The story is narrated in the first person by kathy who, at the age of thirty-one and near to the end of her life is looking back over her life, loves and friendships. At first it seems Kathy is at a slightly eccentric boarding school but although everything seems normal to Kathy it’s possible to sense very early on that something is not quite right. It’s a creepy feeling like watching the beginning of a horror film where you know there’s a monster but you haven’t yet seen it and you don’t know the form it will take.

We soon learn that Kathy and almost everyone she knows is doomed but that the doom is many years off. Kathy and her friends have time grow up, form friendships, fall in love while knowing all the time that everything is going to be ripped away from them and there is little they can do about it.

The characters are superbly observed and believable; the writing is subtle and never heavy handed. There is no blatant sentimentality or hand-wringing - the quality of the writing made me feel for the characters and I felt a real sense of loss at the end of the story.

This is not a happy book - it is bittersweet at best - and yet it demonstrates the old axiom that it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all in spite of the pain when one’s love is lost.

You might not think this sounds like your kind of book, but give it a try anyway. It’s not fast paced but if you let yourself be drawn in you won’t want to stop reading.

Links

• Amazon.co.uk
• Amazon.com