I completely understand where you are coming from but wish I could find the review I wrote on our Booker site that explains why I love Never Let Me Go as much as I do.
Firstly, I loved the simplicity of the language. In the entire book there is only one word that my middle school students, whose first language isn’t English, would understand. Ishiguro did this purposefully.
Brainwashed? Certainly. They believe that they are doing a service and as Madam states, it’s impossible to change people’s minds at the point when the book takes place. Why don’t they commit suicide? Or consider it at all? Because they have been led to believe their lives have value. Their donations make them special. And we all must complete. Most of us don’t know how or when. Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy do.
They have strong feelings of love for each other and Ruth feels tremendous guilt for keeping Kathy and Tommy apart. So they have lived, in their minds, fully.
I am a deeply emotional person so I suppose reading the book touched me because naturally it’s a terrible, sad, selfish society that would create a world like this. I am really at a loss for words to explain why I loved Never Let Me Go so much.
What I do understand, however, is why you didn’t. It’s a hard book to love, I suppose. But I did.
"They have lived, in their minds, fully." This makes the text beautiful. You're right, Cecile. It reminds me of a similar passage in The Garden of Evening Mists. I can try to find your facebook response if you like.
I love how your empathy shines through in your reflection on the book. You have a deeply emotional connection to the characters and their plight. Intelligere est pati; understanding comes from being moved. I can tell how moved you were. From the many reasons why we read, foremost among them might be *to feel something.* The fact that you felt profoundly in reading this novel means that Ishiguro has succeeded. And my strong reaction is also evidence of his literary success.
What did you think of the song? Is there another song that you associate with the book, Cecile? I'll let you know my thoughts on the movie. Gotta brace myself.
It’s was beautiful. I only learned about her recently. I’ll share my favorite. Looking on YouTube now. Will take some time to think of a song to go with Never Let Me Go. Probably a Simon and Garfunkel? Janis Ian? Nostalgia by Annie Lennox? Must be something on that beautiful album.
I do admire people with big huge brains AND the ability to communicate that in beautifully written prose. You have a gift Rebecca. I’m so happy you found this space where you could fully express yourself and not be concerned about the censor.
Thank you so much. You don't know how much it means to me. I want to lay the groundwork to have conversations here. Writing is half of my process, and having meaningful discussions in order to learn from others is the second half of what I seek. And I don't see all of that being possible on a censorious platform. Thank you for reading and thinking with me.
I’m not sure that I am any longer capable of holding my end up on your goal, but I will always read what you have to say and offer what I can, but but it will never reach your level of capability.
I'm not totally at home here. I couldn't edit my errors above. That irks. And navigation is not easy in following threads. But thank you for having me 😃
Do you have access to a laptop, perchance? It shouldn't be required, obviously, and I'm also still learning this platform. You can edit responses on the desktop version of the Substack program. Hopefully better functionality will come to the mobile version soon!
Reading these 2 posts has made my day. I actually loved the book when I read it many years ago but I know it is just a visceral experience for me and I wish I had the capacity to dissect and explain WHY I love or hate a book. Thank you Rebecca and Cecile for your wonderful, insightful posts.
I love learning from others and their responses to literature. I think the individual response of each reader is as fascinating as the book itself. We each have our own direct relationship to the text and then a much richer one that comes from discussion. I actually have tempered my views on it since considering how much others, like Cecile and you, loved it, and it's not me just being impressionable, I don't think; I think it's testing how the text is working in the real world and what its effects are, and that makes it better to me. And the song is just breath-taking, isn't it? A work of literature that can inspire that depth of feeling in song form and has all these artistic influences and afterlives is something rare and truly great. And my husband and I will be watching the film adaptation soon! Cecile told me to get tissues ready!!
I have twins too. But they will be 53 in May. A daughter born 5 minutes before her brother. They are very, very close and live in Melbourne. My son is single (was in a long term gay relationship which left him very sad and financially insecure at its end) and my daughter has an 11 yo son with her partner (he didn’t want to marry as he had been married previously and is Polish (which he seems to blame for all shortcomings). They have been together more than 12 years. ☹️ My daughter has a very senior position with a big Tech company and she travels and recently won a big award which was to be presented in US. She could bring a partner so she took her brother and they had the most wonderful time. Twins certainly have a special bond. I’ve recently started my son reading literature (he uses my Amazon books) and is working his way through Sebastian Barry’s books. (At least this is a book related post if somewhat obscure!🤣)
They weren’t that close till he had a major car accident and fractured his c2 vertebra and crushed his sternum at 18. He had to stay in bed with mirrors not turning his head as they couldn’t fit a “halo thingy”. Lots of time to think and he came out to her first, then me. Was really amazed how none of us batted an eye. They were best mates from then.
So sweet she took her brother. My son longed for a sibling and his dad ( we are good friends) finally remarried and had a daughter. My son and his sister are very close.
I don’t tell many people this, but more than a decade ago my son said he and Penelope had found a show they liked called Game of Thrones. So I started watching by buying the CD’s as I didn’t have access to HBO at the time. Now…I don’t like violence, excessive nudity, incest…any of the things included in GoT. But I was hooked. Even bought all the books which are on my iPad. Horrible writing!
But I stayed with the show. And the episode with Jenny of Oldstones was a lovely one…the night they all believed they probably wouldn’t survive and gathering with the characters they cared about. So the song is perfect!
It really is!! I'm loving that. Thanks for sharing the backstory. I watched it with my husband, but the violence and themes were not my usual fare, either. I remember thinking that it had some parallels to the symbolic killing of the king in order to restore legitimacy to the monarchy in James Frazier's The Golden Bough.
I don’t know that book but Martin definitely set it to parallel the Middle Ages in England. Should I read The Golden Bough? Wondering why it sounds familiar.
I remember now that I also commented on someone’s post about a book where the author was constantly describing the characters every time they appeared and she hated it. I responded that in Never Let Me Go there are no physical descriptions of any of the characters except one, when Ruth and Kathy visit Tommy to visit the stranded ship. Ruth says Tommy appeared to have gained a stone since they had last seen him years ago. That was the only description in the entire book. Again, purposefully done. That’s the beauty of Ishiguro’s writing. He chose to use spare language, without descriptions, I think so that what was actually happening to them in life and the true horror of it all stood out.
Firstly, many of the members of this group who have been involved since the first day know that my favorite contemporary author is Kazuo Ishiguro. Years after reading both The Sea and Never Let Me Go in 2005, The Sea remains a distant memory and Never Let Me Go is instilled in my heart forever.
I really have enjoyed many of the comments above. I’m surprised that some bring up the idea of suicide because the donors actually do take some pride in their contributions and roles.
Of course, the relationship between Tommy and Kathy H is heartbreaking because they truly want more time together and even hope, briefly, that the Gallery will give them that chance. I loved the ending. Kathy is so spot on that we will all complete at some point and for most of us we don’t know when that will be.
I have experienced loss, and there is never enough time. I will soon be 71 and live far away from my beloved son and my deeply loved granddaughters. I want to live another twenty years to experience what their choices will be and enjoy their company.
Ishiguro’s very simple writing enhances the power and message for me. Enjoy every single moment and cherish the people we love. I recently reread the book and own the movie which I watch regularly.
Your thoughts have greatly enriched and enhanced the novel for me, and I thank you for that. You pinpointed that Ishiguro purposefully avoids physical descriptions of his characters, which has many effects, but two of which are to focus on the action, as you said, and so that everyone can identify with the characters and their story without getting distracted by identifiers that alienate the reader. Maybe Tommy, Ruth, and Kathy are kinds of "everyman" and "everywoman." I think Ishiguro is asking us to imaginatively inhabit Ruth, Tommy, and Kathy's world in order to empathize with them and their actions, and he wants to keep inviting comparisons to our lives and choices. For example, in the film, we got to the scene where the kids are telling Miss Lucy about the legends of kids who got locked out from the school grounds, only to be abandoned in the woods, die abjectly, and haunt the woods, and this is the reason why the Hailsham students won't go beyond their fenced borders. A version of this anxiety of abandonment appears in the book as well. It reminded me of the Booker podcast discussion of The Remains of the Day, positing Darlington Hall as the whole of England and asserting that Miss Kenton does not leave Darlington Hall and realize her promise to do so after the Jewish maids are dismissed, because Darlington Hall represents all of society and she is terrified of being placed outside of it and left to the horror of utter abandonment and desolation through isolation, something similar to what Giorgio Agamben referred to as "bare life" and "homo sacer" -- the one devoid of any social protections, thus violable and open to all barbarities and ravages. Likewise, Hailsham represents the students' only tie to the human community, and they are petrified to experience abandonment by traversing its boundaries and being excluded. And all of us have traded in freedoms for the safety, security, and benefits of civilization, and though we may feel somewhat trapped by its constraints, we don't want to lose the social world in order to live outside the systems.
Beautiful reply. Yes, Hailsham represents security for the donors. Remember when they are all in the car to try to find Ruth’s original and Ruth responded when asked that, yes, they had had many experiences of the outside world and Tommy immediately repudiates her response? So he is aware. But does nothing.
My life has been a bit out of the norm, traveling, moving homes, attempting to learn new languages. I stepped out of the boundaries of Hailsham and reveled in that freedom. Now, ironically, when I would love to return home to the security of family, friends and health care, I created my own Hailsham and don’t have the means to leave. So I am somewhat isolated as you referenced in your mention of The Remains of the Day. Like Kathy H and Tom in Old God’s Time, I spend much of my time with my memories. And cherish them although sometimes along with grief. Perhaps that’s why, even though I first read Never Let Me Go in 2005, it speaks to me so profoundly.
Yes, please try to find my post. And the image of the plastic on the fence. So glad you noticed that. Symbolism at its best is hyperbole, but it’s still quite good. Let me know what you think of the film.
I direct messaged it to you in case you want to post it here. :-)
Your reflection on NLMG reminds me of a quote I love from The Garden of the Evening Mists:
"'One day, a guard beat me for not bowing properly. He wouldn't stop, but just kept hitting me. I found myself in a garden. There were flowering trees everywhere, the smell of water...' I paused. 'I realized that where I had been was a combination of all the gardens I had visited in Kyoto. I told Yun Hong about it. That was the moment we started to create our own garden, in here,' I said, tapping a finger on the side of my head. 'Day by day we added details to it. The garden became our refuge. Inside our minds, we were free'" (48).
I'm in the middle of the film now. One of the tragic things that strikes me while I watch that I didn't linger on while reading is that while the clones are the uncanny, dark doubles for mainstream society that have been repressed and invisibillized and are objects of both horror and vampiric/vulturish expropriation, the clones imagine their dark doubles as the outcasts of respectable society -- pimps, prostitutes, porn stars, junkies, and criminals. This notion that they're copied only from those people seems like it would be apocryphal and dubious, because undoubtedly they'd be much more successful as organ donors if they were copied from a broad cross-section of society, right? Or maybe not. Kathy and Ruth's anxiety is hard to make sense of, because whoever their copies are, it doesn't affect or reflect on the clones. Maybe it's that part of how people normalize and rationalize their chains, by building up a horrifying and unrespectable Other from which to differentiate oneself and to say, well, at least I'm not like them. I don't know, really. What do you think?
I'll reply to this review more fully soon, when I've had chance to muse on your excellent and intriguing thoughts and have tried to re-familiarise myself with the details of the novel. I read 'Never Let Me Go' in 2008 and I'd say that, once again, my response to the book was similar to yours. I was never one of the many fan boys of the novel; visions of dystopian future societies have to work hard with me because they can easily fall into the fantasy genre, which for me is a turn off. I admire Ishiguro's writing in general as a rule, but I've never fallen deeply in love with his novels outside of 'The Unconsoled', which I consider easily his best, and a short-story collection called 'Nocturnes'.
I completely understand where you are coming from but wish I could find the review I wrote on our Booker site that explains why I love Never Let Me Go as much as I do.
Firstly, I loved the simplicity of the language. In the entire book there is only one word that my middle school students, whose first language isn’t English, would understand. Ishiguro did this purposefully.
Brainwashed? Certainly. They believe that they are doing a service and as Madam states, it’s impossible to change people’s minds at the point when the book takes place. Why don’t they commit suicide? Or consider it at all? Because they have been led to believe their lives have value. Their donations make them special. And we all must complete. Most of us don’t know how or when. Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy do.
They have strong feelings of love for each other and Ruth feels tremendous guilt for keeping Kathy and Tommy apart. So they have lived, in their minds, fully.
I am a deeply emotional person so I suppose reading the book touched me because naturally it’s a terrible, sad, selfish society that would create a world like this. I am really at a loss for words to explain why I loved Never Let Me Go so much.
What I do understand, however, is why you didn’t. It’s a hard book to love, I suppose. But I did.
"They have lived, in their minds, fully." This makes the text beautiful. You're right, Cecile. It reminds me of a similar passage in The Garden of Evening Mists. I can try to find your facebook response if you like.
I love how your empathy shines through in your reflection on the book. You have a deeply emotional connection to the characters and their plight. Intelligere est pati; understanding comes from being moved. I can tell how moved you were. From the many reasons why we read, foremost among them might be *to feel something.* The fact that you felt profoundly in reading this novel means that Ishiguro has succeeded. And my strong reaction is also evidence of his literary success.
What did you think of the song? Is there another song that you associate with the book, Cecile? I'll let you know my thoughts on the movie. Gotta brace myself.
It’s was beautiful. I only learned about her recently. I’ll share my favorite. Looking on YouTube now. Will take some time to think of a song to go with Never Let Me Go. Probably a Simon and Garfunkel? Janis Ian? Nostalgia by Annie Lennox? Must be something on that beautiful album.
I do admire people with big huge brains AND the ability to communicate that in beautifully written prose. You have a gift Rebecca. I’m so happy you found this space where you could fully express yourself and not be concerned about the censor.
Thank you so much. You don't know how much it means to me. I want to lay the groundwork to have conversations here. Writing is half of my process, and having meaningful discussions in order to learn from others is the second half of what I seek. And I don't see all of that being possible on a censorious platform. Thank you for reading and thinking with me.
I’m not sure that I am any longer capable of holding my end up on your goal, but I will always read what you have to say and offer what I can, but but it will never reach your level of capability.
Nah, I'm just very verbose. :D. Thank you, Kenny.
Agree with Kenny, you write wonderfully and have a talent for book analysis. I'll mostly be a reader of your work also.
Also zj only use my phone currently so it has its limitations for writing.
Aww, thank you, Sandie. Nice to see you here anyway. At least I know I'm not screaming into the void (Goethe), lol.
I'm not totally at home here. I couldn't edit my errors above. That irks. And navigation is not easy in following threads. But thank you for having me 😃
Do you have access to a laptop, perchance? It shouldn't be required, obviously, and I'm also still learning this platform. You can edit responses on the desktop version of the Substack program. Hopefully better functionality will come to the mobile version soon!
I don't currently. My PC and laptop are both too old. So phone it is until I decide what next to get. All good 👍 I will get used to it and manage.
My laptop is also very old -- too old to receive software updates, and I refuse to replace it yet. Screw planned obsolescence, lol.
Reading these 2 posts has made my day. I actually loved the book when I read it many years ago but I know it is just a visceral experience for me and I wish I had the capacity to dissect and explain WHY I love or hate a book. Thank you Rebecca and Cecile for your wonderful, insightful posts.
I love learning from others and their responses to literature. I think the individual response of each reader is as fascinating as the book itself. We each have our own direct relationship to the text and then a much richer one that comes from discussion. I actually have tempered my views on it since considering how much others, like Cecile and you, loved it, and it's not me just being impressionable, I don't think; I think it's testing how the text is working in the real world and what its effects are, and that makes it better to me. And the song is just breath-taking, isn't it? A work of literature that can inspire that depth of feeling in song form and has all these artistic influences and afterlives is something rare and truly great. And my husband and I will be watching the film adaptation soon! Cecile told me to get tissues ready!!
Definitely need tissues.
Did I read somewhere you have 8.5 yo twin or am I confusing you with someone else?
Yes, I have twin daughters who are 8.5. I homeschool them, and we have a grand time. 😁
I have twins too. But they will be 53 in May. A daughter born 5 minutes before her brother. They are very, very close and live in Melbourne. My son is single (was in a long term gay relationship which left him very sad and financially insecure at its end) and my daughter has an 11 yo son with her partner (he didn’t want to marry as he had been married previously and is Polish (which he seems to blame for all shortcomings). They have been together more than 12 years. ☹️ My daughter has a very senior position with a big Tech company and she travels and recently won a big award which was to be presented in US. She could bring a partner so she took her brother and they had the most wonderful time. Twins certainly have a special bond. I’ve recently started my son reading literature (he uses my Amazon books) and is working his way through Sebastian Barry’s books. (At least this is a book related post if somewhat obscure!🤣)
Wow, that's so cool. I hope my daughters will have that wonderful lifelong bond that your twins have. Any advice on how to cultivate that?
They weren’t that close till he had a major car accident and fractured his c2 vertebra and crushed his sternum at 18. He had to stay in bed with mirrors not turning his head as they couldn’t fit a “halo thingy”. Lots of time to think and he came out to her first, then me. Was really amazed how none of us batted an eye. They were best mates from then.
Wouldn’t recommend it though! A bit extreme! 🤣🤣🤣
So sweet she took her brother. My son longed for a sibling and his dad ( we are good friends) finally remarried and had a daughter. My son and his sister are very close.
I don’t tell many people this, but more than a decade ago my son said he and Penelope had found a show they liked called Game of Thrones. So I started watching by buying the CD’s as I didn’t have access to HBO at the time. Now…I don’t like violence, excessive nudity, incest…any of the things included in GoT. But I was hooked. Even bought all the books which are on my iPad. Horrible writing!
But I stayed with the show. And the episode with Jenny of Oldstones was a lovely one…the night they all believed they probably wouldn’t survive and gathering with the characters they cared about. So the song is perfect!
It really is!! I'm loving that. Thanks for sharing the backstory. I watched it with my husband, but the violence and themes were not my usual fare, either. I remember thinking that it had some parallels to the symbolic killing of the king in order to restore legitimacy to the monarchy in James Frazier's The Golden Bough.
I don’t know that book but Martin definitely set it to parallel the Middle Ages in England. Should I read The Golden Bough? Wondering why it sounds familiar.
Probably not. 😅 It's long- winded. Interesting but not necessary. I think the stuff on your TBR list sounds better.
Good because I really want to get to my TBR list.
I remember now that I also commented on someone’s post about a book where the author was constantly describing the characters every time they appeared and she hated it. I responded that in Never Let Me Go there are no physical descriptions of any of the characters except one, when Ruth and Kathy visit Tommy to visit the stranded ship. Ruth says Tommy appeared to have gained a stone since they had last seen him years ago. That was the only description in the entire book. Again, purposefully done. That’s the beauty of Ishiguro’s writing. He chose to use spare language, without descriptions, I think so that what was actually happening to them in life and the true horror of it all stood out.
Firstly, many of the members of this group who have been involved since the first day know that my favorite contemporary author is Kazuo Ishiguro. Years after reading both The Sea and Never Let Me Go in 2005, The Sea remains a distant memory and Never Let Me Go is instilled in my heart forever.
I really have enjoyed many of the comments above. I’m surprised that some bring up the idea of suicide because the donors actually do take some pride in their contributions and roles.
Of course, the relationship between Tommy and Kathy H is heartbreaking because they truly want more time together and even hope, briefly, that the Gallery will give them that chance. I loved the ending. Kathy is so spot on that we will all complete at some point and for most of us we don’t know when that will be.
I have experienced loss, and there is never enough time. I will soon be 71 and live far away from my beloved son and my deeply loved granddaughters. I want to live another twenty years to experience what their choices will be and enjoy their company.
Ishiguro’s very simple writing enhances the power and message for me. Enjoy every single moment and cherish the people we love. I recently reread the book and own the movie which I watch regularly.
And I do think it's a book that beautifully conveys loss and trying to hold onto the people and places that matter most to us, in memory.
Much like Old God’s Time.
Yes, absolutely. 💔
Your thoughts have greatly enriched and enhanced the novel for me, and I thank you for that. You pinpointed that Ishiguro purposefully avoids physical descriptions of his characters, which has many effects, but two of which are to focus on the action, as you said, and so that everyone can identify with the characters and their story without getting distracted by identifiers that alienate the reader. Maybe Tommy, Ruth, and Kathy are kinds of "everyman" and "everywoman." I think Ishiguro is asking us to imaginatively inhabit Ruth, Tommy, and Kathy's world in order to empathize with them and their actions, and he wants to keep inviting comparisons to our lives and choices. For example, in the film, we got to the scene where the kids are telling Miss Lucy about the legends of kids who got locked out from the school grounds, only to be abandoned in the woods, die abjectly, and haunt the woods, and this is the reason why the Hailsham students won't go beyond their fenced borders. A version of this anxiety of abandonment appears in the book as well. It reminded me of the Booker podcast discussion of The Remains of the Day, positing Darlington Hall as the whole of England and asserting that Miss Kenton does not leave Darlington Hall and realize her promise to do so after the Jewish maids are dismissed, because Darlington Hall represents all of society and she is terrified of being placed outside of it and left to the horror of utter abandonment and desolation through isolation, something similar to what Giorgio Agamben referred to as "bare life" and "homo sacer" -- the one devoid of any social protections, thus violable and open to all barbarities and ravages. Likewise, Hailsham represents the students' only tie to the human community, and they are petrified to experience abandonment by traversing its boundaries and being excluded. And all of us have traded in freedoms for the safety, security, and benefits of civilization, and though we may feel somewhat trapped by its constraints, we don't want to lose the social world in order to live outside the systems.
Beautiful reply. Yes, Hailsham represents security for the donors. Remember when they are all in the car to try to find Ruth’s original and Ruth responded when asked that, yes, they had had many experiences of the outside world and Tommy immediately repudiates her response? So he is aware. But does nothing.
My life has been a bit out of the norm, traveling, moving homes, attempting to learn new languages. I stepped out of the boundaries of Hailsham and reveled in that freedom. Now, ironically, when I would love to return home to the security of family, friends and health care, I created my own Hailsham and don’t have the means to leave. So I am somewhat isolated as you referenced in your mention of The Remains of the Day. Like Kathy H and Tom in Old God’s Time, I spend much of my time with my memories. And cherish them although sometimes along with grief. Perhaps that’s why, even though I first read Never Let Me Go in 2005, it speaks to me so profoundly.
I feel that so much. Thank you for sharing that, Cecile.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2-F7K6UZEVg
I think what's perfect about it is it captures Kathy H's desire to freeze time and live in the past, because the future only brings impending doom.
This song works for me with Never Let Me Go. What do you think?
It's perfect. Thank you for sharing this one. 💞
Jenny of Oldstones, from GOT, right? Listening to it now
Although it might have simply been a long response to someone’s post. Sorry that I don’t remember.
Yes, please try to find my post. And the image of the plastic on the fence. So glad you noticed that. Symbolism at its best is hyperbole, but it’s still quite good. Let me know what you think of the film.
I direct messaged it to you in case you want to post it here. :-)
Your reflection on NLMG reminds me of a quote I love from The Garden of the Evening Mists:
"'One day, a guard beat me for not bowing properly. He wouldn't stop, but just kept hitting me. I found myself in a garden. There were flowering trees everywhere, the smell of water...' I paused. 'I realized that where I had been was a combination of all the gardens I had visited in Kyoto. I told Yun Hong about it. That was the moment we started to create our own garden, in here,' I said, tapping a finger on the side of my head. 'Day by day we added details to it. The garden became our refuge. Inside our minds, we were free'" (48).
I love that book and I have it on my old iPad. Definitely worth a reread one day.
Drat. I said would understand and I obviously meant wouldn’t. 😂
I'm in the middle of the film now. One of the tragic things that strikes me while I watch that I didn't linger on while reading is that while the clones are the uncanny, dark doubles for mainstream society that have been repressed and invisibillized and are objects of both horror and vampiric/vulturish expropriation, the clones imagine their dark doubles as the outcasts of respectable society -- pimps, prostitutes, porn stars, junkies, and criminals. This notion that they're copied only from those people seems like it would be apocryphal and dubious, because undoubtedly they'd be much more successful as organ donors if they were copied from a broad cross-section of society, right? Or maybe not. Kathy and Ruth's anxiety is hard to make sense of, because whoever their copies are, it doesn't affect or reflect on the clones. Maybe it's that part of how people normalize and rationalize their chains, by building up a horrifying and unrespectable Other from which to differentiate oneself and to say, well, at least I'm not like them. I don't know, really. What do you think?
I'll reply to this review more fully soon, when I've had chance to muse on your excellent and intriguing thoughts and have tried to re-familiarise myself with the details of the novel. I read 'Never Let Me Go' in 2008 and I'd say that, once again, my response to the book was similar to yours. I was never one of the many fan boys of the novel; visions of dystopian future societies have to work hard with me because they can easily fall into the fantasy genre, which for me is a turn off. I admire Ishiguro's writing in general as a rule, but I've never fallen deeply in love with his novels outside of 'The Unconsoled', which I consider easily his best, and a short-story collection called 'Nocturnes'.