While I’d been busy writing my fourth and fifth novels, my study had mysteriously transformed itself around me into a kind of miniature indoor jungle. Everywhere were dusty mountains of scribbled-on pages and precarious towers of folders.
In the spring of 2001, however, I began work on my new novel with renewed energy, having just had the room entirely refurbished to my own exacting specifications. I now had well-ordered shelves up to the ceiling and—something I’d wanted for years—two writing surfaces that met in a right angle. My study felt, if anything, even smaller than before (I’ve always preferred to write in small rooms, my back to any view), but I was immensely pleased with it. I’d tell anyone interested how it was like being ensconced in the sleeper compartment of a period luxury train: all I had to do was revolve my chair and reach out a hand to get whatever it was I needed.
One such item now readily accessible was a box file on the shelf to my left marked “Students Novel.” It contained handwritten notes, spidery diagrams, and some typed pages deriving from two separate attempts I’d made—in 1990, then in 1995—to write the novel that was to become Never Let Me Go. On each occasion I’d abandoned the project and gone on to write a completely unrelated novel.
Not that I needed to bring down the file very often: I was quite familiar with its contents. My “students” had no university anywhere near them, nor resembled at all the sort of characters encountered in, say, The Secret History or the “campus novels” of Malcolm Bradbury and David Lodge. Most importantly, I knew they were to share a strange destiny, one that would drastically shorten their lives, yet make them feel special, even superior.
But what was this “strange destiny”—the dimension I hoped would give my novel its unique character?
The answer had continued to elude me throughout the previous decade. I’d toyed with scenarios involving a virus, or exposure to nuclear materials. I even dreamt up once a surreal sequence in which a young hitchhiker, late at night on a foggy motorway, thumbs down a convoy of vehicles and is given a lift in a lorry hauling nuclear missiles across the English countryside.
Despite such flourishes, I’d remained dissatisfied. Every conceit I came up with felt too “tragic,” too melodramatic, or simply ludicrous. Nothing I could conjure would come close to matching the needs of the novel I felt I could see dimly before me in the mists of my imagination.
But now in 2001, as I returned to the project, I could feel something important had changed—and it was not just my study. (...)
I even had a kind of “eureka” moment—though I was in the shower, not a bath. I suddenly felt I could see before me the entire story. Images, compressed scenes, ran through my mind. Oddly I didn’t feel triumphant or even especially excited. What I recall today is a sense of relief that a missing piece had finally fallen into place, and along with it a kind of melancholy, mixed with something almost like queasiness.
I went about auditioning three different voices for my narrator, having each one narrate the same event over a couple of pages. When I showed the three samples to Lorna, my wife, she picked one without hesitation—a choice that concurred with my own.
After that I worked, by my standards, pretty rapidly in my refurbished study, completing a first draft (albeit in horribly chaotic prose) within nine months. I then worked on the novel for a further two years, throwing away around eighty pages from near the end, and going over and over certain passages.
This has meant that over the years I’ve been asked many questions about the novel, not just from a range of readers, but from writers, directors, and actors wrestling with the task of transferring this story into a new medium. Reflecting on these questions today, it occurs to me that the great majority of them can be gathered into two broad categories.
The first might be summarized by this question: “Given the awful fate that hangs over these young people, why don’t they run away, or at least show more signs of rebellion?”
The second group of FAQs is slightly harder to characterize, but essentially comes down to: “Is this a sad, bleak book or is it an uplifting, positive one?”
I’m not going to attempt here to answer either of the above, partly because I don’t wish to give spoilers in an introduction, but also because I feel quite content, even proud, that this novel should provoke such questions in readers’ minds. I will however make the following observation—which may possibly make greater sense after you’ve finished the book.
It seems to me that these most-asked questions about Never Let Me Go arise because of tensions concerning its metaphorical identity. Is this story a metaphor about evil man-made systems that already exist today—or are in imminent danger of existing—ushered in by uncontrolled innovations in science and technology? Or, alternatively, is the novel offering a metaphor for the fundamental human condition—the necessary limits of our natural lifespans; the inescapability of aging, sickness, and death; the various strategies we adopt to give our lives meaning and happiness in the time we have allotted to us.
It may be both a strength and a weakness of this novel that it often wishes to be both of the above at one and the same time, thereby setting certain elements of the story in conflict with one another.
In the spring of 2001, however, I began work on my new novel with renewed energy, having just had the room entirely refurbished to my own exacting specifications. I now had well-ordered shelves up to the ceiling and—something I’d wanted for years—two writing surfaces that met in a right angle. My study felt, if anything, even smaller than before (I’ve always preferred to write in small rooms, my back to any view), but I was immensely pleased with it. I’d tell anyone interested how it was like being ensconced in the sleeper compartment of a period luxury train: all I had to do was revolve my chair and reach out a hand to get whatever it was I needed.
Not that I needed to bring down the file very often: I was quite familiar with its contents. My “students” had no university anywhere near them, nor resembled at all the sort of characters encountered in, say, The Secret History or the “campus novels” of Malcolm Bradbury and David Lodge. Most importantly, I knew they were to share a strange destiny, one that would drastically shorten their lives, yet make them feel special, even superior.
But what was this “strange destiny”—the dimension I hoped would give my novel its unique character?
The answer had continued to elude me throughout the previous decade. I’d toyed with scenarios involving a virus, or exposure to nuclear materials. I even dreamt up once a surreal sequence in which a young hitchhiker, late at night on a foggy motorway, thumbs down a convoy of vehicles and is given a lift in a lorry hauling nuclear missiles across the English countryside.
Despite such flourishes, I’d remained dissatisfied. Every conceit I came up with felt too “tragic,” too melodramatic, or simply ludicrous. Nothing I could conjure would come close to matching the needs of the novel I felt I could see dimly before me in the mists of my imagination.
But now in 2001, as I returned to the project, I could feel something important had changed—and it was not just my study. (...)
***
There might have been other factors around at that time: Dolly the Sheep, history’s first cloned mammal, adorning the fronts of newspapers in 1997; the writing of my two previous novels (The Unconsoled, When We Were Orphans) making me feel more sure-footed about taking deviations from everyday “reality.” In any case, my third attempt at “the Students Novel” went differently to before.I even had a kind of “eureka” moment—though I was in the shower, not a bath. I suddenly felt I could see before me the entire story. Images, compressed scenes, ran through my mind. Oddly I didn’t feel triumphant or even especially excited. What I recall today is a sense of relief that a missing piece had finally fallen into place, and along with it a kind of melancholy, mixed with something almost like queasiness.
I went about auditioning three different voices for my narrator, having each one narrate the same event over a couple of pages. When I showed the three samples to Lorna, my wife, she picked one without hesitation—a choice that concurred with my own.
After that I worked, by my standards, pretty rapidly in my refurbished study, completing a first draft (albeit in horribly chaotic prose) within nine months. I then worked on the novel for a further two years, throwing away around eighty pages from near the end, and going over and over certain passages.
***
In the twenty years since its publication in 2005, Never Let Me Go has become my most-read book. (In hard sales terms, it overtook quite quickly The Remains of the Day despite the latter’s sixteen years head start, Booker Prize win, and the acclaimed James Ivory film.) The novel has been widely studied in schools and universities, and translated into over fifty languages. It has been adapted into a movie (with Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, and Andrew Garfield as Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy—and a superb screenplay, appropriately, by Alex Garland); a Japanese stage play directed by the great Yukio Ninagawa; a ten-part Japanese TV series starring Haruka Ayase; and most recently a British stage play written by Suzanne Heathcote.This has meant that over the years I’ve been asked many questions about the novel, not just from a range of readers, but from writers, directors, and actors wrestling with the task of transferring this story into a new medium. Reflecting on these questions today, it occurs to me that the great majority of them can be gathered into two broad categories.
The first might be summarized by this question: “Given the awful fate that hangs over these young people, why don’t they run away, or at least show more signs of rebellion?”
The second group of FAQs is slightly harder to characterize, but essentially comes down to: “Is this a sad, bleak book or is it an uplifting, positive one?”
I’m not going to attempt here to answer either of the above, partly because I don’t wish to give spoilers in an introduction, but also because I feel quite content, even proud, that this novel should provoke such questions in readers’ minds. I will however make the following observation—which may possibly make greater sense after you’ve finished the book.
It seems to me that these most-asked questions about Never Let Me Go arise because of tensions concerning its metaphorical identity. Is this story a metaphor about evil man-made systems that already exist today—or are in imminent danger of existing—ushered in by uncontrolled innovations in science and technology? Or, alternatively, is the novel offering a metaphor for the fundamental human condition—the necessary limits of our natural lifespans; the inescapability of aging, sickness, and death; the various strategies we adopt to give our lives meaning and happiness in the time we have allotted to us.
It may be both a strength and a weakness of this novel that it often wishes to be both of the above at one and the same time, thereby setting certain elements of the story in conflict with one another.
