Introducing Never Let Me Go
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Never Let Me Go is a tale of future and past, every page a reminder that all moments were once the present, and all versions of ourselves are in constant communication. Intrigues from childhood remain with us into adulthood, though they gain and lose complexities to the point that they may seem completely transformed. What was important in the characters’ youths- friendship, unspoken rules and societal mores- seem on one page intensely critical and high stakes, and on the next page, blasé and unimportant in comparison with universal ideals like love, companionship, grief, and hope. 
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Ishiguro juxtaposes the mysterious adolescence of Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth at the Hailsham institute with Kathy’s young adulthood where she is reunited with her childhood friends. Though the secrets of Hailsham aren’t fully hidden, we are tactfully kept as in the dark as all the attendees of Hailsham until the final reveal at the end of the book. Though technically a dystopian science fiction novel, Ishiguro only uses the conventions of genre to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of societal morals, and questions surrounding the existence and the alleged corruptibility of the soul. 
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Ishiguro additionally questions how far we go for the sake of loyalty and friendship. Do we cast aside love for the sake of our friends? Kathy is a conduit of the aches and pains of growing up, of doing what you have to do to survive the hellish landscape of preteen relationships. But, in his infamously masterful way, Ishiguro answers his own question by oscillating between Kathy’s childhood and her adulthood, where she works to reevaluate her own past and the incongruities and mysteries that held it together. Further, he reintroduces Tommy and Ruth, but time has changed them, as they have Kathy as well. The rigors of adult life outside the walls of Hailsham, with the three of them fulfilling the destinies they had been prepared for, both crushed their adolescent naivetes, while also bringing those naivetes to the surface in others. Ishiguro shows us how hardships can affect our outlooks on life, by turning the ever manipulative Ruth into a regretful, grief-laden woman, the short tempered and malleable Tommy into a man who protects his own wishes, and Kathy from a curious, careful girl always swimming against the fringes of social life into a woman who wants truth and love to pass the final finish line hand in hand. 
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“Never let me go” seems the dying call of each character in the novel, both to the people and friendships that constructed their lives, and to the past versions of themselves. And the novel itself, like its title implies, will never let you go. The strict social rules the children follow remind us of forgotten dramas of our own childhoods, and the reveal of the true nature of the characters calls into question the implications of how much of ourselves we see in Ruth, Kathy, Tommy, Madame, Miss Emily, and all the rest. 
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-Abby Edgecumbe