November’s Bookshelf by the Sea 

^{Photo taken by Estella Meola '26} 

Forging Friendships in Sci-Fi Story, Never Let Me Go: A Review  

Written by Wendy Xue ’28   

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is a dystopian story that attracted me from the first page. The story’s timeline seems complicated, but it is easy to get around with when reading it. The story has three sections that go through the main character, Kathy’s, three periods of life.  The story is set in the 1990s, when a group of clone kids are put in a state-sanctioned program that is trained to donate their organs to people who have cancer. Once they’ve donated 3-4 organs, they will be “complete,” which is the euphonism of saying death.  

Kathy reminisces about her past and tells the story at the age of 31. In the first section, Kathy recollects her childhood in a school filled with clone children. She remembers her friendship with a girl named Ruth, and she befriended Tommy. In the second section, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy go to live outside in a village along with some other people. There, Kathy’s friendship with Ruth started to break. She left the village to become a “carer,” taking care of donors (people who donate their organs). In the third section, Kathy goes with Tommy to find the truth of their program and their fate. This story is filled with sci-fi, friendship, the future, and a little romance. I would highly recommend this to people who want a book to read at their leisure because it will bring you on a journey in Kathy’s world.  

4/5 Waves! 

Wendy (Pengxi) Xue ’28 is a boarding student from Beijing, China. Out of the classroom, she participates in Juntos, AAFC, dance, and the musical at Tabor. Her favorite genre to read is fantasy, she says, “because these are the types of books I can immerse into.” The best text she has read for/in a Tabor English class thus far is We Are Not Free by Tracy Chee. She reflects, “I enjoyed it because writing from a Japanese American perspective is completely new to me. My sister also recommended me to read Lolita in the future.” Fun fact: her favorite word is “utopia.”