Review: Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

Hello, once again, readers, book-enthusiasts, friends. This will be my first review, and it is for Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, which comprises my 'I' for my A-to-Z Challenge 2015, and is a landmark as it officially marks that I am halfway through my reading challenge of 52 books for the year! Can I get a hell yeah?!
Never Let Me Go is a horrible book. And not because I hated it, because I actually gave it 5 stars, but because the very premise is just despicable. I shall digress later. I didn't know what to expect from this book at all. All I knew that it was very critically-acclaimed and had been recommended to me by multiple people, including my sister, Kristi, and my previous English teacher. The blurb did not give me much information on the plot either, but I had gathered that this was set in England and had some dark undertone to it, almost like a dystopia. What I found during the course of reading this book was how subtle the dystopia was, and yet nevertheless terrifying and heart-wrenching.
The book is narrated by a woman of 31 years old called Kathy H., who reminisces over her time spent at Hailsham School and her and her friends' fates afterwards. *WARNING: this next bit will reveal aspects of the novel which will likely be spoilers, so skip this paragraph if you are thinking of reading it* Kathy, and her friends, including other main characters, Ruth and Tommy, are all clones, modeled off living people, whose main purpose in life is to donate their vital organs. They donate their organs one by one until they 'complete', and meet their demise. This dark truth is not obvious to begin with, but it is drip-fed to the reader throughout the novel, keeping us in a state of suspense and mystery. In this way, the dystopia was concealed in the fogs of memory, and yet gradually it became apparent and tangible just how horrifying and immoral the world of this novel was.
If I were to describe what kind of effect this novel had on me, I would say it disturbed me viscerally; never before had I felt such inner sadness towards characters in a book, bringing me closer to the cusp of tears than I had ever experienced from literature, even from the notoriously-woeful The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. The premise was just so tragic and horrific; the idea of these people being brought up just to befall such a lonely and harrowing fate churned my stomach in pity. I had actually began to develop a strong enmity for Ruth for being so malicious and mean to Kathy and Tommy, but I felt I couldn't have such feelings towards her by the end because I just felt so sorry for her. It had such a massive effect on me emotionally, I am still mulling it over in my mind and it yet casts a shadow on me. This book is powerful. I have begun to think of it in a similar way to the way I think of the Channel 4 drama Black Mirror, in that it shows you society through a pane of dark glass; paralleling life in a shocking and thought-provoking way. Is this really a social commentary? Do the donors in this book actually represent others oppressed in our society? Whether this was the intention or not, it got me thinking this through, which is rather seldom from my experiences.
All in all, I thought this book was very much worth the acclaim it received. It is phenomenal, inspiring raw emotion and laying bare a bleak society that we are all obliviously familiar with. Pick up this book, especially if you are a fan of dystopian fiction. You will not be disappointed.