🇺🇸 read: Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro

 My friend Wendy asked me to read this book. I am happy she did.

Kathy, Ruth, Tommy and their friends attend a British boarding school, Hailsham.

And while there are many elements that one recognizes from boarding school stories, something about this one is off. 

The story is told from Kathy’s perspective, but there is always something missing. Some key information, that allows the reader to get the bigger frame about this school.

The book follows the three main characters in a typical coming of age story, leaving the school, starting their lifes. But they are not free in their choices.

It’s fascinating how Ishiguro achieves to transmit the theme of the book into the way he narrates the story, the reader is experiencing the same puzzling feeling that there is something one just can’t put the hand on that the characters deal with.

Even after finishing the book, there are so many answers missing. The big WHY  and HOW is still in the room. And this is very much intentional, and it makes this book so very haunting. 

After finishing the book, I read some reviews and critics, and while everyone agrees it is a great book, almost everyone struggles to put it into a box: Is it a coming of age story? Is it sci-if? Maybe horror? 

It is also a very philosophical book, but not in a shove it in your face kind of way.

What is fate? Can you change or at least influence your fate? Are we free in our decisions? What makes us human? Do we have a soul, and how does it show? 

There is also a movie from 2010 with a really great cast that I want to watch now.

Thank you for recommending this book to me, Wendy!

PS 🇩🇪 ein absolut faszinierendes Buch, aber ich könnte mich jetzt schon wieder endlos über die deutsche Titel-Übersetzung aufregen. “Lass mich niemals gehen” wäre ein toller Titel gewesen, der dem Original voll entspricht. Der Deutsche Titel “alles, was wir geben mussten” ist ein echtes Ärgernis, weil er wichtige Teile der Handlung vorwegnimmmt und einen Teil der sehr überlegten, durchdachten Erzählweise des Romans kaputtmacht. Ich kann so etwas einfach nicht verstehen.

(🇺🇸 This is a rant in German about the title translation. It changed from “Never let me go” To “everything we had to give” and it makes me really mad how this interferes with the clever way the book is narrated)