Never Let me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Never Let me Go was my book club's pick for our April discussion.

Eight out of nine of us enjoyed the book which is saying a lot since we have such diverse tastes.

It's set in the 90s, yet it's got a futuristic feel to it.

The narrator is Cathy H. and she speaks to the reader directly throughout the book, as if the reader is her peer. Cathy is a human clone who lives in a world where scientific experiments have achieved cures for cancer and all kinds of horrible diseases. Many of these cures involve the use of cloning. In fact, clone "farms" are common and these clones are raised knowing that their sole purpose in life is to grow up and donate their organs to regular humans to keep them alive.

Cathy grew up at Hailsham, a different type of clone farm. It was set up like a boarding school and was one of the few humane places for clones. The "guardians" at clone farms wanted to give the clones a childhood with a decent quality of life, so they set up an environment where they could be educated and live very similarly to other children.

We get to watch Cathy and her friends grow up and leave Hailsham. Most of her friends become donors, but Cathy herself is a "Carer." Her job is to take care of the other donors until she is notified that it's time for her donations to begin.

It was a very interesting story. The writing style made bits and pieces of the story leak out over the course of the book, but the author always held just enough back to make me want to go ahead and read the next chapter to find out more.