The shadow world of science fiction is as varied as any literary genre, but all science fiction has one thing in common:  whether consciously or not, it echoes the anxiety of its era through metaphor.  Kazuo Ishiguro’s foray into sci-fi, Never Let Me Go, may be light on death rays and alien species, but it is laden with musings on the sinister side of human nature.

The novel consists mainly of the reminiscences of Kathy H., a 31-year-old “carer” living in England in the 1990s.  After being reunited with her childhood friends Ruth and Tommy, Kathy begins to reflect on her seemingly idyllic life at Hailsham, an isolated boarding school run by a tight-lipped staff of “guardians.”

Mr. Ishiguro attempts to build suspense around the nature of Kathy’s work, dropping surgical-sounding hints about donations and recovery centers, before whisking the reader back to Kathy’s school days.  At Hailsham, she and her classmates blithely throw their energy into art projects and sports and pause only occasionally to wonder what secrets the guardians may be keeping.

The great mystery of the novel is no mystery at all.  As the author reveals early on, the Hailsham students are clones who have a chilling future ahead of them.  “If you’re going to have decent lives then you’ve got to know and know properly,” one of the guardians imparts.  “None of you will go to America.  None of you will be film stars.  Your lives are set out for you.”

While the novel has little to offer as a thriller, it succeeds in its portrayal of childhood loyalties and adolescent fads.  Mr. Ishiguro examines the obsessions of youth—gossip, popularity, envy over possessions—and turns up their volume until they are almost painfully vivid.  The students move from one petty fixation to the next, hoping to improvise some truth about the outside world.

But the essence of the novel lies buried beneath the teenage chatter, in the unnatural fate that Kathy and all of the Hailsham students have been assigned.  The most disturbing feature of Never Let Me Go (thanks to Kathy’s rather irritatingly childish narration) is the innocuous tone in which the story plays out.  Her passive acceptance is more tragic than the fate itself.

Kazuo Ishiguro won the Booker Prize in 1989 for The Remains of the Day, his story of a repressed butler who places devotion to duty above his moral judgment and his own desires.  Like The Remains of the Day, Mr. Ishiguro’s sixth and latest novel has a strangle hold on low expectations and the status quo.

Characters in both books stifle their affections and see their lives through a lens of propriety and obedience.  They step up to the precipice of happiness and then turn around on their heels, because it simply is not done.  Kathy and Tommy barely shrug when their hopes of escape are thwarted.  They are servants of another kind, servants to science, and they know their place.

April 2008