In many reviews, including that of The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly, of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Never Let Me Go, the story is described as “controlled.” After thinking over this idea, there is really no better way to describe the style of the progression of the novel than controlled. Ishiguro slowly feeds the reader certain details or bits of information about the story, but at very specific times and only when he wants to. Throughout the entire book, details are revealed little by little, only granting the reader enough information to keep one curious but not enlightened. He does in fact reveal certain aspects of the students at Hailsham, such as the fact that they were clones or their unavoidable fates as donors, but these are not told immediately. The reader has to wait a while to figure out that Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth are clones, and then one has to wait even longer to understand their predetermined purpose. It seems as though Ishiguro was treating the reader as a student from Hailsham and feeding him just enough information to understand something, but not enough to understand the whole picture. The Hailsham students were slowly told information about their lives over time, but the delivery of it was planned out so that they would not fully grasp what was being told to them, creating a kind of blind acceptance. However, while Ishiguro was dragging us along the entire time, he reveals everything in the end, exactly as he wanted to. The students’ encounter with Miss Emily explains it all to them, but also to the reader. Miss Emily states, “Why should you have done, knowing what lay in store for each of you?” (Ishiguro, 268). Her simple statement proves the controlled aspect of the novel. What would the students have done if all of the information about their lives was revealed at once? What would the reader have done if the same thing happened to us?
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