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Reading this book, the central question for me was, "Is it believable?"
Do I believe a recognisably British society (not too dissimilar to today's) would farm fully sentient, human clones so that it can harvest their organs for donation to the medically needy, risking the lives of the clones in the process? We have to assume that organ rejection is not an issue, as Ishiguro gives very little detail about the harvesting and donation process, or how the farming came about in the first place.
Do I believe that the clones would passively accept the role that society has dictated for them, to the extent they see it as their duty?
We have to suspend belief, or supply our own rationales: perhaps the clones are genetically pre-disposed to be passive and conformist - we can guess that they were cloned from individuals who were pre-screened to have these traits. Ishiguro instead concentrates on the nurture side of the nature versus nurture debate - how the upbringing of the clones in an isolated, disciplined environment would lead them as adults to accept the fate society had decreed.
A case in point - the selection and collection of the best of the artwork made by the student clones. I assumed this was to instil pride in them for giving away something that they highly valued, which would later transfer to giving away something more physical and intimate. At the end of the book Ishiguro gives an entirely different reason for the collection: to prove that the students had souls in an attempt to get them better treatment. By not readily supplying all the answers, Ishiguro has forced me to think up my own, to use my imagination to fill in the gaps.
Even here I was not totally convinced, and was anticipating at least one of the protagonists would attempt to escape. I suppose they did attempt as far as they were able, but it was very feeble.
This is where the genius of this book lies - it does not pander to our expectations of escape and redemption, fuelled by legions of stories where the protagonist overcomes all odds against the evil overlord to win their final triumph. In that respect, "Never Let Me Go" is truer to most of our lives, where we do go along from day to day with our lot, and never try to break out.
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