Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

I cannot shake the feeling that I've misread this book. To me, it's a horror story involving human clones fated to spend and ultimately end their lives as organ donors. The way in which they passively await their destiny ("completion") alarmed me.  This was my second book by Ishiguro. Previously, I had read Klara and the Sun. Both books are written in first person with a narrator who seems to have an incomplete understanding of the world. Both books are set in an alternate timeline that varies slightly from our own. Klara seems to be in a near future, and Never Let Me Go is in an alternate past from just after world war 2 to the late 1990s. The narration is set in the 1990s, looks back over the previous couple of decades, and focuses on the relationship among three "donors" (Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy) as they grow up and become adults.

I feel as if I was missing something. Why did Kathy (the narrator) and her friends passively accept their roles? Why didn't they run? Initially, they misunderstood their situation, but even as understanding came they still didn't react. They were created to be organ donors, but there was never any exposition explaining why their choices were constrained. They were not confined. They were free to come and go and travel. What am I missing?

I found such films (and by the way, Never Let Me Go came out as a movie in 2010) as Parts: The Clonus Horror -- wonderfully adapted in the eighth season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 -- or its higher-budget remake The Island easier to understand. In these latter stories, a clone flees upon learning their purpose. I feel as if Ishiguro must have put in something that is escaping me.

Ishiguro is a master of the English language. Even as I was frustrated with the plot, I kept reading because I enjoyed consuming the fruit of his ability as a writer. If you want to sample the output of this Nobel Prize winner, consider reading Klara and the Sun or one of his other books.