Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Short summary

5 seconds

A young woman, Katherine S., talks about her life. She recalls her childhood in boarding school, her adolescence, and her adult life.

1 minute

The action takes place in a utopian world, in the late twentieth century. In this world, people are cloned to create living organ donors for transplants. One such donor is the heroine, a young woman in her early thirties named Catherine.

Catherine and her friends grew up at a boarding school called Hailsham. The school is very careful about the children’s health and encourages creative pursuits. The boarding school is completely closed off from the outside world.

Growing up, Catherine and the other kids from the boarding school get into different institutions and begin to get to know the outside world. Soon Catherine becomes an assistant at a transplant clinic, and her friends Tommy and Ruth become donors. The heroine takes care of Ruth until she dies, and then becomes an assistant to Tommy, who is also about to have his organs removed and die.

Eventually, Catherine learns that at Hailsham, concerned scientists wanted to prove that donors have souls. But the experiment fails. Catherine realizes that the same fate awaits her as Ruth and Tommy.