*Never Let Me Go* by Kazuo Ishiguro is one of my all-time favourite books – in fact, the only thing stopping it being my overall favourite is nostalgia for books that are particularly special because of where I was in my life when I read them, because I think objectively *Never Let Me Go* is the best book I’ve ever read. I was thinking about it this evening, and I noticed a very interesting self-referential observation that I wonder whether the author intended.
The book’s title is named for the main character Kathy’s favourite song – a track on a cassette she has by a singer called Judy Bridgewater (who is fictitious). Kathy imagines the song to be about a woman who’s been told she can never have children, but by some miracle she does have a baby, and she’s clutching the baby to her and promising to never let it go because she’s afraid of losing what she has. However, although Kathy likes to think about this, she does acknowledge that that isn’t actually what the song is about.
The reason I think this is meta is that I find this to also be true about the real *Never Let Me Go*, the novel. Every time I read the book I feel like it’s about something different. I’m sure that a lot of the metaphors I’ve seen it in were the author’s intention – but there are so many different ones that I’ve thought of that I doubt they all could have been. Sometimes this has included some things that are specific to me personally; there’s one particular experience I had in my childhood that on a really deep and personal level the whole book feels like it could be about. And, like Kathy, I’m sure that this isn’t actually what it’s about, but, like her, I find myself able to easily link it to my own life and situation (in Kathy’s case, she’s unable to have children herself, and you get the impression that she would like to).
*Never Let Me Go* captures so much of the human condition that I find you can interpret it as being a metaphor for almost anything, and I’m sure I’m not the only person to have seen bits of my own personal life story in it. I wonder if the author was thinking, when he wrote about Kathy’s deeply personal interpretation of the song, that this is also something that readers could do about this very book?
by georgemillman