The novel is suffused with a sadness that is almost unbearable at times. The young people are either engineered or rendered surgically sterile, and are told from early on that they can't have babies, that sex is fine, but they must be careful to understand that others do not see sex the same way they do. As a young girl, Kathy finds a tape of a song with a refrain of "...never let me go, baby, baby.." and she imagines it is about a woman who's been told she can't have a baby, but finally does.

The students engage in fantasies about their "possibles"—the parents from whom they were cloned. They discuss their futures—not donation, but rather, futures that exist only in their imaginations, seem banal to us, but are terribly exciting to them: working in a proper office, driving a truck.

Never Let Me Go is partly a meditation on what it means to be human. It moves us to think of our own limits, of what we are desperately seeking, as we ponder our own pasts and plan our own futures, up against the sureness of death.

But there is more, of course. It's not just about being human, but about using human beings. Created to be harvested, nurtured to unquestioningly submit, taught, in fact, to be grateful for their great good fortune, Kathy and her friends are wistful, yearning putty in the hands of their creators, with only a bit of imagination separating them from the very real cloned embryos eagerly nurtured, at this moment, in laboratories in South Korea and, ironically, England.

Why not? many ask, enthused at the prospect of progress. Why not? Is the question Kazuo Ishiguro answers, ever so indirectly, in this quietly moving novel that reveals the harsh limits of life for those we would seek to use to dissolve the limits of our own.
Edited: PC