book review

Half Lives

by Thomas D. Sullivan

“My Name is Kathy H., I’m thirty-one years old, and I’ve been a carer now for over eleven years.” So begins Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel, Never Let Me Go. In an alternative England of the 1990s, cloning has become routine. “Carers” keep up the morale of organ donors, and then later become donors themselves. Kathy H. spends much of the book reminiscing about her past and two friends, Ruth and Tommy, who grew up with her at Hailsham, a boarding school for future organ donors. Something isn’t quite right at Ishiguro’s fictional Hailsham. Kathy and her friends occasionally attempt to figure out what’s going on. Their discoveries are increasingly unpleasant.
Dismaying surprises are at the heart of this story, and it is unfair to both the novelist and future readers to reveal too much of the plot. What is most characteristic of a society is what it accepts as normal, and Ishiguro has reverse-engineered a world where it is normal that some people are merely support systems for organs that will be cut out when more-deserving others need them. The author convincingly imagines how Kathy and her other organ-cultivating friends would see themselves.
The curriculum at Hailsham is filled with classic literature that would prompt some exploration of the purpose of one’s existence, but the minds of the future donors don’t seem to turn in that direction. This is how their minders have raised them to think.
Like the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Never Let Me Go uses a technological premise to explore matters of the human heart. There’s a thread of hope that runs through the story–a hope that love could bring something unexpected to Kathy and her friends. Never Let Me Go reminds you of how our hopes define us. And what it’s like to be defined by others purely for their use.