NEVER LET ME GO

by Kazuo Ishiguro | Read by Rosalyn Landor

Fiction • 9 hrs. • Unabridged • © 2005

From the beginning, Ishiguro seems more intent on teasing listeners than pleasing them. The story simulates but never really delivers action. The characters, Kathy, from whose point of view the story is told, Tommy and Ruth, never seem fully real; even their sex is made to feel tentative, almost abstract. Why does no one in this coming-of-age story ever come of age? Rosalyn Landor's reading floats magically through this world of curiously brittle mannequins with her soft, dreamlike British accent, never quite forceful enough to touch earth. Its finely cultivated but celluloid crispness, like a movie that uses half the number of requisite still frames, constantly teases us to puzzle why her narration is as it is. Gradually we realize that her airily nuanced reading is key to Ishiguro's world, parallel to and frightfully much like but, clearly, not yet our own. P.E.F. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/NOV 05]

Trade Ed. • Random House Audio • 2005

CD ISBN 9780739317983 $39.95 • Eight CDs

DD ISBN multiple sources

Library Ed. • Books on Tape • 2005

CS ISBN 978-1-4159-1558-5 $54.00 • Six cassettes

CD ISBN 978-1-4159-1629-2 $72.00 • Eight CDs

DD ISBN multiple sources