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WARNING: This review contains "spoilers," information that reveals key plot details. This novel works beautifully on multiple levels, giving it a quality that kept me thinking about its plot, characters and themes long after I finished its final page. On the most obvious level it is a sort of alternate history that depicts a dystopian society in 1990s England that breeds human clones to become organ donors for "the normals." In that aspect, it brings to mind Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where humans are created in test tubes and have fixed functions that they grow up to perform in society. However, Never Let Me Go is more subtle than either Huxley or -- another obvious comparison -- George Orwell's 1984, in that the oppressor is not specifically depicted and there is no one person or group that is in obvious conflict with Ishiguro's main characters. There is nothing overt that keeps them in their places, whether that place is at school when they are children, or at "recovery centers" while their internal organs are being systematically plucked out. I kept wondering why the two lovers, Kathy and Tommy, didn't just pick up their stuff, get in her car and take off for parts unknown, eventually blending in with the "normal" population. And that brings me to the next, deeper level, of the novel, which is about the nature of humanity. All of this novel's characters seem to meekly accept their fates, even Tommy, who has a temper and often throws fits of rage when frustrated. They are also hyper-sensitive to one another, reading motivations and emotions into each small gesture and remark, as though every utterance and movement each one makes is deliberate, premeditated and loaded with significance. To me, human behavior is much less reasoned than that, with much said and done that has no rational basis. (Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.) In that regard, perhaps the clones (euphemistically called "students" in the novel) really are not human beings with souls, but beings bred for a specific function, which strong emotions tend to derail. If that is the case, perhaps the students' creators bred human emotion out of them in order to facilitate their end purpose. Most "normals" seem to view the "students" as sub-human, which is of course necessary if the "students'" organs are to be harvested in good conscience. This brings to mind a host of justifications for deplorable acts and practices throughout human history, from slavery to the contemporary killing of the Great Apes. Ishiguro reveals to his readers that the students' adult "guardians" believe they are human beings with souls, and the "guardians" spend a great deal of time and effort trying to prove this to the other "normals." This takes us to yet another, deeper question posed by the story: Can members of a privleged class save those who are less so, or must the oppressed save themselves? The actions that the "guardians" take on behalf of their "students" do not change the ultimate fate of the latter. They do, however, change the conditions in which the "students" are reared. So, in the end, the main "student" characters are well-read, cultured and, as children, had more creature comforts than many of their peers. But they also have false hope that some outside force may "defer" their fates, and in the end those dashed hopes may be more painful to endure than if they never had hope at all. Essentially, the "guardians" are reformers of the Jane Addams type, who move in with the oppressed and try to help them. But the final outcome is not changed, and one is left wondering about the validity of a reform movement in the first place. Perhaps the only real way to make institutional change of the magnitude required in this novel's world is for the "students" to embrace their true identity as clones and start focusing on how to stay alive. Ishiguro does not offer opinions on any of these issues, rather presents the questions in powerfully compelling ways that make us stop and think about our assumptions and the way the tasks of daily life tend to distract us from considering deeper issues. While it's always true that a great novel will mean different things to each person who reads it, I believe that this is particularly the case with Never Let Me Go. There is so much thought-provoking stuff packed inside this relatively short novel that its title becomes prophetic -- you won't stop thinking about it for a long while.