50 Fun Facts About Never Let Me Go

In Never Let Me Go's opening Hailsham memory, Tommy throws a tantrum after being left out of which game?

Football is the game the boys are picking teams for, and they leave Tommy out to enjoy the rage that follows; Kathy, watching from the pavilion, tries to calm him and is hit by accident.

Which English county do Never Let Me Go's students half-believe is a 'lost corner' where lost things end up?

Norfolk, in the students' long-held idea, is the lost corner of England where misplaced things go, and at the very end Kathy drives there to imagine everything she has lost gathering at a fence.

Ramsey Campbell, a prolific writer of which genre, called Never Let Me Go one of its best novels since 2000?

Horror, Campbell argued, is exactly what the book is: 'a classic instance of a story that's horrifying, precisely because the narrator doesn't think it is.'

Ishiguro found the title Never Let Me Go on the sleeve of a solo album, Alone, by which jazz pianist?

Bill Evans's solo record Alone carries a fourteen-minute version of the standard; Ishiguro, who had hoped to be a songwriter before he turned to fiction, lifted the title from its sleeve.

Ishiguro's early drafts of Never Let Me Go, before cloning entered the story, hinged on a plot about which weapon?

A nuclear bomb was the original device until Ishiguro wondered what the 20th century would look like if its great breakthroughs had come in biology and cloning rather than nuclear physics.

Never Let Me Go lost the 2005 Booker Prize to which John Banville novel, a choice one critic called 'perverse'?

The Sea won only on the chairman's casting vote after the judges split between it and Ishiguro's book; Boyd Tonkin of The Independent called the result 'possibly the most perverse decision in the history of the award'.

In the 2010 film of Never Let Me Go, Tommy compares the clone schools still open after Hailsham closes to what?

Battery farms is Tommy's phrase for the schools left once Hailsham has shut; the film presents Hailsham as the last place that treated young clones as nearly human.

Which Oscar nominee for An Education played the narrator Kathy in the 2010 film of Never Let Me Go?

Carey Mulligan had wanted the part since first reading the novel and could not 'bear the idea of anyone else' playing Kathy; the role won her a British Independent Film Award.

Kathy H., narrator of Never Let Me Go, has spent eleven years doing which job?

Carer is the novel's word for those who look after donors; Kathy is trusted to choose hers, which is how she comes to nurse her old Hailsham friends Ruth and Tommy.

In Never Let Me Go, which verb do donors use as a euphemism for dying?

Complete is the clones' word for death: Ruth completes after only her second donation, while Tommy lasts until his fourth.

In Never Let Me Go, rumour says a Hailsham couple can defer donations by proving what?

They are truly in love is the whole test, and Tommy comes to believe Madame's art collection exists to check it, since the students' pictures were said to show who they really were.

In Never Let Me Go, Miss Emily says Hailsham collected its students' art to prove what?

That they had souls was the point of the Gallery: Hailsham was a campaign to show clones were fully human, and it closed once public opinion turned against the idea.

Which Hailsham guardian in Never Let Me Go tells the students plainly what they were made for, and is then removed?

Miss Lucy had earlier told Tommy it didn't matter if he wasn't creative, then took it back, saying his art was important after all, not long before the school got rid of her.

At the Cottages in Never Let Me Go, Kathy notices the older couples have copied their gestures from what?

Television shows supply the manners: Kathy spots that a fond tap on the elbow doing the rounds comes from a sitcom, and tells Ruth, who has picked it up, that it looks daft.

At the Cottages in Never Let Me Go, what is each Hailsham student supposed to spend the stay writing?

An essay on a topic of their choice is the main task set for their time at the Cottages; Kathy picks Victorian novels, but with no guardians to check, nobody takes it very seriously.

Kathy's treasured cassette in Never Let Me Go, the album Songs After Dark, is credited to which singer?

Judy Bridgewater never existed: for the 2010 film the song was written by Luther Dixon and sung by a real jazz vocalist credited under the fictional name.

In Never Let Me Go, what is Kathy doing in her dormitory when Madame watches her and cries?

Slow-dancing to a song with a pillow held to her chest, Kathy looks up to find Madame in tears; years later Madame says she saw a girl clinging to an old world that was slipping away.

In Never Let Me Go, Tommy guesses Madame wept watching Kathy in the dormitory because students can never do what?

Have children is something the clones can never do, but years later Madame gives her own reason: she saw a girl holding on to an old, kinder world as a harsher one arrived.

In Never Let Me Go, what does Tommy begin drawing at the Cottages, hoping to have work for Madame's Gallery at last?

Small animals fill Tommy's new drawings, made so he will finally have art to submit for the deferral he believes the Gallery decides, though Ruth belittles them.

At the end of Never Let Me Go, what has collected against the fence where Kathy imagines her losses gathering?

Windblown rubbish snagged along the wire is the novel's final image: Kathy lets herself imagine that everything she has lost, Tommy above all, might drift back to her, then drives on.

In Never Let Me Go, what slang word do the clones use for an ordinary person who might be someone's original?

Possible is the word for a 'normal' who could be one's original, and the friends' trip to inspect a woman Rodney spotted ends with Ruth raging that clones are 'modelled from trash'.

In Never Let Me Go, where do Kathy and Tommy find her lost tape again, on the trip with Chrissie and Rodney?

A second-hand shop turns up the very album after Tommy suggests they hunt for it, and the emotional moment that follows is what makes Ruth start sabotaging the pair.

Late in Never Let Me Go, what abandoned object do Kathy, Ruth and Tommy make a day trip to see?

An old boat stranded in marshland is the excuse for the reunion, though Kathy suspects Ruth chose it because Tommy's recovery centre happens to be nearby.

At Hailsham in Never Let Me Go, what were the quarterly events where students bought one another's artwork with tokens called?

Exchanges were where reputations were made: tokens earned for good work bought other students' pieces for your 'collection', a quiet rehearsal for giving away far more.

At the Cottages in Never Let Me Go, what are older residents such as Chrissie and Rodney called?

Veterans is the word for those who arrived earlier, and Ruth becomes so fixated on impressing them that she pretends to know all about the deferral rumour they bring up.

In Never Let Me Go, Ruth's 'secret guard' protects which beloved Hailsham guardian from an imagined kidnapping?

Miss Geraldine, the kindly art teacher who indulges even Tommy's poor drawings, is the object of the imaginary plot, and Ruth throws Kathy and Moira out of the guard.

In Never Let Me Go, which item does Ruth pass off as a gift from her favourite guardian, having bought it herself?

A pencil case is the prop in one of Ruth's small lies, of a piece with her pretending to be a chess expert when she does not actually know how to play.

In Never Let Me Go, what kind of workplace does Ruth picture in the 'dream future' she talks about at the Cottages?

An office with happy staff at their desks is Ruth's dream, so when a woman who might be her original is seen working in one, the friends drive out to spy on her; the likeness soon fades.

Never Let Me Go's alternative 1990s England earned it a 2006 shortlisting for which British science-fiction prize?

Clarke Award judges shortlisted it beside five genre novels, though critic Louis Menand argued the story keeps its holes because 'genetic science isn't what the book is about'.

The author of Never Let Me Go was born in which Japanese city, leaving for Surrey with his family at age five?

Nagasaki is where Kazuo Ishiguro was born in 1954, and he did not set foot in Japan again until 1989, nearly thirty years after leaving.

Where did the author of Never Let Me Go take the creative writing MA taught by Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter?

University of East Anglia's famous course produced his thesis, which became his 1982 debut A Pale View of Hills, after a BA in English and philosophy at Kent.

Before his degree, the author of Never Let Me Go spent a gap year as a grouse beater on which royal estate?

Balmoral Castle's grouse moors employed him in the summer of 1973, and the following spring he spent three months hitch-hiking around the USA and Canada.

Which 2021 Ishiguro novel, told by an 'Artificial Friend', revisits Never Let Me Go's question of what makes us human?

Klara and the Sun follows a solar-powered robot chosen as companion by a sickly girl; convinced the Sun can heal, Klara crosses the fields to plead with it to save the child's life.

In Never Let Me Go, a guardian finally tells the students the truth after overhearing two boys dream of which career?

Actor was the plan: the boys pictured themselves heading to America to make it, and the daydream angered her into telling the class that their futures had already been decided.

The Never Let Me Go author earned a 2023 Oscar nomination for adapting Kurosawa's Ikiru into which Bill Nighy film?

Living follows a dying council bureaucrat who spends his last months forcing through a playground that the council's departments had kept passing between them.

The author of Never Let Me Go writes lyrics for which jazz singer, having picked her record on Desert Island Discs?

Stacey Kent asked him to write for her after he chose her 'They Can't Take That Away from Me' in 2002, and his lyrics appear on her Grammy-nominated Breakfast on the Morning Tram.

The real jazz standard Never Let Me Go, which gave Ishiguro his title, was first sung on film in 1956 by whom?

Nat King Cole sang it on screen in Michael Curtiz's The Scarlet Hour; the 'Never Let Me Go' heard in the 2010 film is a different song altogether, by another writer.

Which author of The Beach, a long-time friend of Ishiguro, wrote the screenplay for the 2010 film of Never Let Me Go?

Alex Garland had a 96-page script in hand before the novel was even published in 2005, and Ishiguro says it changed very little on its way to the screen.

Which director of Johnny Cash's 'Hurt' video made the 2010 film of Never Let Me Go?

Mark Romanek refused to treat it as science fiction, calling the film 'a love story where the science fiction is this subtle patina on the story' and shooting no futuristic buildings.

Who played Ruth in the 2010 Never Let Me Go film, taking the part only because her friend playing Kathy asked?

Keira Knightley was the hardest of the three leads to make look plain, the director said: 'even at her worst, Keira still looks astonishing'.

Who played Tommy in the 2010 film of Never Let Me Go and won a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor?

Andrew Garfield said Tommy's howls of rage were 'intense' to film: 'I think those screams are inside all of us, I just got a chance to let mine out'.

Which composer, the first woman to win an Oscar for a film score, scored the 2010 film of Never Let Me Go?

Rachel Portman felt a huge sweeping score would not suit the film, so she wrote what she called a chamber piece for no more than 48 players, built on piano, strings and harp.

Which star of Happy-Go-Lucky played the truth-telling guardian in the 2010 film of Never Let Me Go?

Sally Hawkins had just co-starred with the film's Kathy in An Education, and she took the role of the new guardian who is fired by Miss Emily for her honesty.

Which future star of Fallout and Yellowjackets played the young Ruth in the 2010 film of Never Let Me Go?

Ella Purnell was among the 12-year-olds the director said would have to carry the film's first act, so the young actors watched the adult cast rehearse their scenes first.

Which National Trust property near Richmond supplied Hailsham's exteriors in the 2010 film of Never Let Me Go?

Ham House, a 17th-century mansion on the Thames, played the school from outside, while Clevedon's Victorian pier, used for the seaside scenes, ended up on the film's poster and the tie-in book cover.

While filming Never Let Me Go, its lead kept rereading the novel because Kathy, she said, is what kind of narrator?

Unreliable is the word she used: 'much of the time she's not being truly honest with herself or the audience', so the book's lines were her guide whenever a scene felt uncertain.

Which studio's chief sent a four-word 'hire the genius' text during An Education, casting Kathy in Never Let Me Go?

Fox Searchlight's Peter Rice was still mid-film at Sundance when he texted the director his four words, backing a near-unknown lead with what was called 'rare foresight'.

Which US magazine named Never Let Me Go the best novel of 2005 and lists it among the 100 best since 1923?

Time's All-Time 100 covers English-language novels since the magazine's founding in 1923, and the book also received a 2006 Alex Award from the American Library Association.

Which Hilary Mantel novel topped a 2019 Guardian list of the century's best books, with Never Let Me Go fourth?

Wolf Hall led the list ahead of Gilead; the paper praised Ishiguro's fourth-placed novel for its 'exquisite understatement' in exploring mortality and what it means to be human.

The 2010 film of Never Let Me Go had its world premiere at which American festival, held over Labor Day weekend?

Telluride screened it first on 3 September 2010; the following month it opened the 54th London Film Festival, as the film of Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day had done in 1993.