Notes on "Never let Me Go"

Our appreciation for any piece of writing depends on our mood, expectations and level of interest in the story.  It would be foolish of me to attempt to describe all the elements of a good read, since we all come at reading from different points of view.  But I think we would generally agree that a good book must have an interesting story, the characters must be believable, and they must be interesting enough to care about.

To me the author's job is much like that of an angler.  Present a tasty lure, make it look interesting, set the hook, keep the light taut, reel em in with force.

I read "Never Let Me Go"  as a sci fi story.  The early bits were intriguing, the dialogue seemed authentic to me and, as a good reader, I was able suppress my confusion with the strange terminology to allow the story arc to develop.  However, the number of  questions that went unanswered continued to accrue.   I assert that somewhere in the writing, the answers must be implied or given.  This story waited until the final pages to ham-handedly answer some of the questions.  By that time,  after endless pages of introspection, and little action,  I had stopped caring about the characters.

I was left with a raft of unanswered questions:  What is left (in a body) after donating 3 organs? Who got the organs?  Who was the unseen  authority behind the carer/donor program? How did they receive their orders? Was there not even one clone who would try to escape their fate? What did the narrator think about her humanity?  I could go on.
So, if I may strain the fish metaphor, my take is that the author succeeded in hooking me in the beginning with promising lures that seemd to be going somewhere.  But he did not provide the tension to reel me in.  He let the line spin out until the end of the reel and eventually, the hook simply fell out.

Many of the thumbs-uppers were already fans of the author, and perhaps had a predisposition to find this work lovable.  Others were connected in some way to care-giving professions and saw authenticity in the account of the narrator.

The nattering naysayers were less forgiving.  Count me among them.

Dennis Noonan