Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, Never Let Me Go, is primarily a schoolgirl's diary with a bit of the unusual thrown in. Ishiguro seems to be obsessed with the propriety of British public school life and the repressed attitudes it engenders, so there's a palpable atmosphere of impotence mixed in with fear of societal opprobrium; even if one wanted to stand up for oneself, well, it wouldn't do, don't you see? It's simply not done. One doesn't tell off one's supposed friends; at best, one traps one's frenemies in awkward social circumstances where one can heap castigation without fear of reprisal.

It's like playing Spades with barbs and jests and feints instead of cards.

The thing is, Ishiguro is very good at writing in this fashion, and the story flows past like a powerful stream, not unpleasant at all in its flow, but inexorably pulling toward an unpleasant end. Kathy, his narrator, tells the story in a series of gushing remembrances, almost as though confiding to a carer of her own; her restrained passion for her story, and her need to confess it to the reader, are infectious, even as the story becomes more sinister and creepy.

In the end, however, propriety and its ability to rob one of all outrage win out, leaving this reader to wonder many things, not least of all, can the horrible complacency be undone?