Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

It's a bit coincidental how I'm teaching a second grade reading group the importance of generating questions while reading a book ~ because this book left me with a lot more questions than I usually have pertaining to a plot, characters, events, etc.  For my students, this is a skill I want them to practice because it will help them develop those higher order of thinking skills, which are so important for academic success.  For all of us, question generating allows us not only to think more deeply about the story but also to understand it more clearly.  Never Let Me Go certainly fueled my own higher order of thinking skills toward a spinning and churning cycle.

The minute I dove into this one, I got the odd sense that I was not leaping into a shallow pool.  Plunged into the thick of obscurity from the start, I kept asking myself:  "What are guardians?  What are carers?  What is the purpose of Hailsham?  Why are these students here?"  The terms and language were initially confusing and their meanings continued to remain just as vaguely throughout most of the book.  Add that confusion to a writing style that took me a while to adjust to, a rambling narrator, and characters that were not easily likable, and I often found my mind wandering and losing focus.

Further into the novel, I began questioning the plot holes.  Were these gaps intentionally left by the author?  Because of her unfortunate circumstances, we have an unreliable narrator.  Did she purposely leave out specific details that I'm questioning because she didn't want to tarnish our perceptions of her?  These were pretty big details to leave out too.  For example, once these students arrive at the Cottages, we are never told whether or not they find jobs, earn money.  They just seem to sit there in a sort of gray, melancholic pergatory.  Yet, they somehow have money to buy things like old music tapes and gas for their cars.

And the biggest question I was left pondering was this:  These students know that they will eventually perform a specific, dangerous, and deadly purpose with their lives.  It is what they were "bred" for.  Despite the fact that many of them questioned it and were uncomfortable with it, I can't understand why none of them attempted to flee from the Cottages in search of a better situation.  No one was holding them back.  They certainly had the ability to travel away from the cottages (hence, a trip out of town to buy this Judy Bridgewater tape).  Had there been some sort of "escape" from the cottages, the story definitely would have been much more suspenseful and fulfilling.  It would have given the story's purpose (and revelation) a true and meaningful resolution.

Some of my questions were answered throughout the novel; however, most of them were left lingering.  I can't say that this was a great read, but it was certainly intriguing.  It involves a delicate subject matter that forces readers to think about the morals and actions of our society as it pertains to medical research.  This is not a book for everyone.  It wasn't even a book for me.  But any novel that throws my mind into a tailspin and forces me to generate questions at this depth and level is worth a nod.