Random thoughts on book: Never Let Me Go

Before I started reading, I went to check out the reviews of this book on Amazon. There is a one-star review that says “read if you enjoy endless monologue”.

This is exactly right (although I don’t agree with the ‘one-star’ part). The whole book is a lengthy monologue that does not seem to ever get into a “plot”. It does not make your heart thump, or give you a rush from anger, excitement, anticipation, or anything like that. It only makes your heart sink a bit, unknowingly.

I enjoyed the read, partially because I don’t mind monologue at all. Talking to myself in my mind is something I do all the time, and reading Kathy’s narrative is no difference. It’s like having her voice playing in my head silently, seeing the world (Hailsham, Cottages, the care centres) through her mind, engaging in conversations as she would, and discovering the truth about their identity, bit by bit.

There are many angles from which you can talk about, but here I have no intention getting into the storyline at all, or the social aspects (biotechnology and ethics, humanity all that) to it. I just want to say that the writing of this book, how the monologue was describing almost precisely some obscure feelings that everyone once had, was shockingly in detail and in a very delicate way. I suppose you do need lengthy monologues sometimes just to spill out that mixed and delicate emotion, but once you get into the character, everything seems reasonable and resonates with your own reaction perfectly. In fact I don’t recall any other book, being first-person narrative or not, was able to mingle with my own mind so naturally, as if the protagonist were just my alter ego. This is why I like the narratives. They were by no means blunt. They fit in the storylines well, and in many occasions, they voiced my voice.

The story begins to really unfold probably only towards the last one fourth of the book, where it seemed to me that their life all of the sudden had accelerated. By the end of reading, the ending of One Hundred Years of Solitude mysteriously came to my mind. And if I were to add a line (a hidden line maybe, as that’s how I’d like to picture it) at the end, that will be something like this:

Two people deeply in love with each other, yet did not spend the best time of their lives together, will never get a chance to make it up, no matter how hard they try.