ALL HANDS TO THE PUMP

Never Let Me Go

by Kazuo Ishiguro

“A clear frontrunner to be the year’s most extraordinary novel, Never Let Me Go is the third book in what could be called Kazuo Ishiguro’s Bewilderment Trilogy. Like its predecessors, The Unconsoled (1995) and When We Were Orphans (2000), it is riddled with mystery. As Kathy, a 31-year-old carer living in England in the late 1990s, looks back at her school days at Hailsham, a picturesque establishmentnestling amid quiet countryside, an unsettling strangeness emanates from her reminiscences. What initially seems a near-idyll of benign teachers, lively students, stimulating classes, sporting triumphs on the playing fields, midnight gossips in the dorm and friendly strolls around the pond with its bulrushes and wildfowl assumes an increasingly out-of-true aspect. Innocuous words — “carer”, “students”, “donations”, “complete” — take on deepeningly sinister overtones. Gradually, through Kathy’s rosy-tinted retrospect, the contours of a horrific situation loom.”

Taken from  http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/