Kazuo Ishiguo’s Slow World Building Packs A Serious Emotional Wallop

At this point you’re probably wondering why I only read books that have been made into movies with Kiera Knightly (see “Atonement”) but I swear that’s not the case. The Book to Read Next Lottery made the choice, I am merely a vessel.

Anyway, much like “Atonement,” “Never Let Me Go” is a novel that was adapted into a movie I’d already seen prior to reading the book, so I was already aware of the novel’s twist and ending.

But, goddammit, that did not prevent me from just ugly crying reading it. Maybe the most I’ve ever cried reading a book before. What the hell. And even when I knew it was coming. Crazy.

If you look up “Never Let Me Go,” you’ll see it categorized into a spectrum of genres, like coming-of-age, romance, sci-fi, and even horror, and literally all of these are valid.

You’d expect such a genre mishmash to be sort of chaotic, but Ishiguro writes with such subtlety and restraint and calm that it doesn’t remotely come off that way, which I think lends to the book’s ultimately brutal staying power.

Because this isn’t some sort of action adventure, genre-blending thrill ride. It’s simply a young woman, Kathy, recounting her time at an odd prep school in England in the ‘90s, and recalling memories of her relationships with her two best friends that she met there, Ruth and Tommy. We see them go through school, with the relatively normal beats hit, crushes, fights, etc, eventually leave the school, and see Kathy working as a nurse.

Slowly but surely, though, Ishiguro leaks hints that things aren’t quite right, and that this isn’t the England we know, but rather one in an alternate reality. And the nature of that reality is revealed solely through Kathy’s recall, as casual and ordinary as a friend telling you a story. Which makes the science fiction and horror of the novel so frightening, traumatic, and heartbreaking, because for Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy, this terrible world is ordinary and casual.

I’m being deliberately opaque here, but to give away what Ishiguro so confidently constructs would be a disservice. But this is some of the most realistic and human world building I’ve ever read in a book, and the effects are emotional, powerful, and even alarming. You’ll cry like a baby.