When We Were Humans: Never Let Me Go and ALoning

Sloane, Peter (2025) When We Were Humans: Never Let Me Go and ALoning. Novel: A Forum on Fiction, 58 (1). pp. 19-35. ISSN 0029-5132

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Abstract

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go has been the subject of a range of interpretative approaches, from posthuman readings of the clones’ predicament to disabilities studies readings interested in the novel’s relevance to questions of eugenics. The novel, in much the same way as When We Were Orphans, The Buried Giant, and Klara and the Sun, has also prompted heated debate about Ishiguro’s use, or misuse, of genre conventions. Here, engaging with the critical reception of the novel, this article argues that Ishiguro is foremost interested in the function of narrative, and of language, and the ways in which subtly disseminated stories come to form, or more accurately deform, our worlds. Rumors abound in Never Let Me Go, but they acquire through repetition, andthrough desperation, a profound significance in the limited lives of the novel’s subjects.

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