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 is a classic of the dystopia genre.
It’s quiet, soft, heart-wrenching. There’s not a lot going on in there, to the point that the novel, no matter how horrible its premise, feels quite cozy at times.
Knowing the main twist may have made it less memorable for me, or maybe it’s the very old and faded memories from the movie – which I loved whenI watched it as a kid, to the point that I remembered scenes as I was reading them. (Carey Mulligan was definitely one of my queer awakenings.)
It’s a classic, and it’s soft and sad, but something was missing for me and I don’t know what. Maybe if I had read the book without knowing the premise or remembering vague aspects of the movie, it would have hit different.
While I loved the spoken-word style or the rambling narrator, something was amiss and I didn’t fully enjoy my read.