By

Read By

Kerry Fox

Length

9 hrs and 26 mins

Audiobook Review

Never Let Me Go

2005

Genre(s)

Kazuo Ishiguro

Overall

Performance

Emilia Fox elevates this powerful book to perfection.

Excellent, Unforgettable, Best of the nest

Very good, thoroughly enjoyed,

Good, Solid, Enjoyed many aspects

STAR RATINGS GUIDE

THE BIRDICT

This is the only Kazuo Ishiguro book I have liked, but it is also one of the most beautiful stories I've ever heard. It has a sense of a misty landscape that slowly clears. It's wistful in tone, as I believe the children would be. Kathy is an excellent main character. You sense there is something amiss in how she thinks, something just slightly off, but Ishiguro manages to reveal it slowly.

SQUAWKING THE TALK

I've always loved Emilia Fox's acting and she is the perfect choice as Kathy. She shifts as Kathy does, subtly changing between the arrogance of youth and a more mature confidence.

SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO...

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I think this has a similar feel to Atonement as well as the works of Kate Atkinson.

I felt such a sense of betrayal for these children and was heartbroken as each one undertook what they saw as their purpose. It was such an inventive twist and beautifully executed.

ABOUT

Never Let Me Go

THE BLURB

Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it.

Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date. (less)