It’s natural for a child to assume that his or her own childhood is unremarkable. That’s one reason it takes Kathy, the narrator of Never Let Me Go , so long to twig that the very exclusive English boarding school she attends with her friends Ruth and Tommy is not quite ordinary. No responsible reviewer would reveal the exact nature of the horror that lurks there, but suffice to say that it’s thoroughly horrific. Ishiguro’s readers see the looming shadows before Kathy does, but by then it is far too late.
