telegraph.co.uk

Caroline Moore reviews Never Let Me Go
We start to speculate darkly upon the meanings masked behind "carer", "donor", "do-nation" and "agitated"; but Kathy, who takes the set-up for granted, does not explain.
It is particularly moving when it reflects the uncertainties of adolescence: a time, after all, when we all feel outsiders yet try to blend in, like Kathy and her friends, who imitate behaviour seen on television; and when we all struggle with questions about the purpose of our existence. The terrible truth, as readers will guess from the start, is that Hailsham students, unlike the rest of us, actually have one.
...in its evocation of a pervasive menace and despair almost but not quite lost in translation - made up of the shadows of things not said, glimpsed out of the corner of one's eye - the novel is masterly.

Theo Tait reviews Never Let Me Go
Inevitably, reading Never Let Me Go is not exactly an enjoyable experience. There is no aesthetic thrill to be had from the sentences – except that of a writer getting the desired dreary effect exactly right.
The school has dorms and beautiful grounds, team sports and monitors, but also a strong emphasis on "creativity" (at Hailsham, pupils are bullied for being bad at art). ..The children do not have surnames – they are called things like Reggie D and Arthur K (an effect somewhere between Kafka and Enid Blyton). They do not have parents. Nor do they ever leave the school. Some of the teachers appear to be scared of them. And all the time there are passing references to a strange regime of "carers" and "donors": it seems that all Hailsham children will be first one, then the other.
Kathy H talks in a sort of social worker's drone, all professional cant and washed-out idiom ("When it came down to it…"; "Anyway, I'm not making any big claims for myself.") The horrible future that is in store for her and her friends only gradually looms up through the studied banality of her narration.
Never Let Me Go appears, on the face of it, to be a cautionary tale about cloning. Except the story takes place in some kind of parallel England, where the obvious arguments about the atrociousness of farming humans have no force. For the Hailsham students, there are no efforts to argue and no redress – except for Kathy and Tommy's touchingly pitiful attempt to have their donations deferred because they love each other. There isn't even any authority to appeal to - there are only Kafkaesque intermediaries: "guardians", "whitecoats" (doctors) and caretakers. All news of their condition comes in the form of half-understood rumour. They have access to cars and money, but it never occurs to them to run away. They face it all with stoicism, a distressing dedication to the donor ethic.
Gradually, it dawns on the reader that Never Let Me Go is a parable about mortality. The horribly indoctrinated voices of the Hailsham students who tell each other pathetic little stories to ward off the grisly truth about the future - they belong to us; we've been told that we're all going to die, but we've not really understood.