Duty bound

Kazuo Ishiguro's characters are often compelled by a sense of duty. In his latest book, Never Let Me Go, this is taken to a sinister extreme. Sinéad Gleeson meets the writer finds meaning in responsibility

The opening lines of Kazuo Ishiguro's new book, Never Let Me Go are chillingly innocuous. The narrator tells us, "My name is Kathy H. I'm 31 years old, and I've been a carer now for over 11 years." The word 'carer' conjures up images of nurses or home help, but as this story unfolds its meaning is far more unsettling.

The narrative centres on Kathy's time spent at Hailsham, a boarding school cut off from the world around it. Her account of what happened in the past and her subsequent career form the backbone of a compelling, sinister story and is far removed from the author's previous work.

"I see this as a very different kind of book," says Kazuo Ishiguro, "but I don't think it's as strange as some people do. In the reviews I've read recently, the words 'strange' or 'sinister' keep coming up."

Of his other novels, those words mostly apply to The Unconsoled, a dark tale of a placeless world where nothing is as it seems. His first book, A Pale View of the Hills, was published when he was 28, and was followed four years later by An Artist of the Floating World, which won the Whitbread Prize. His best-known work – thanks to the Merchant Ivory film adaptation – is The Remains of the Day, which won him the Booker Prize. All of these books are a delicate balance of attention to detail and nuanced subtlety, which show Ishiguro's mastery of realism. Never Let Me Go is, however, the antithesis, as it's set in the most surreal of worlds. Hailsham is a dystopian commune where the teenagers can't ever have children. Smoking, or anything detrimental to their health, is not permitted. Words like "complete", and "donations" creep into the text hinting at the reality of what's going on.

"I had the idea years ago and I have a big folder containing notes for what I called 'The students novel'. I wanted to write about a group of young people living in wrecked farmhouses who were students, but there was no university and I knew that some bad fate hung over them. I knew what I wanted them to stand for but I couldn't figure out the framework. Originally I had played around with the idea of nuclear weapons but recently there's been much debate about cloning and I knew that the framework for this story could come from there."

These seemingly normal students who play rounders and listen to music are actually clones who have only one horrific purpose. As Kathy later becomes a carer to some of her friends, a sense of obligation bubbles away beneath the surface. A day outing provides an opportunity to choose a different life, but deep down, we know that the characters accept their fate, and are bound by duty, like Stevens, the butler in The Remains of The Day.

"It's something I do instinctively in my writing," says Ishiguro "and with this book it was a very important feature that escape was not an option. It's about how we're all aware of our fate, in that we have a limited time in life. Escape isn't an issue in the book, because it's never really an option in our own lives. Characters like Stevens and the kids in Never Let Me Go do what we all do; try to give meaning to our lives by fulfilling some sort of duty."

In his books, the duty of an Ishiguro narrator is to be unreliable, but here he's keen to distance Kathy from that tag.

"In books like The Remains of the Day and An Artist of the Floating World, the main characters only look back because their lives have fallen apart. They don't really want to look back, but they feel obliged to find out where everything went wrong. They play games with themselves and Kathy isn't like them because my other narrators are unreliable to themselves – but for Kathy, memory is a source of comfort and she has a more emotional motive for looking back."

Kathy and the other 'students' are constantly encouraged to write poetry and to paint. Each month, the most promising work is whisked away by a mysterious woman known as Madame for her 'Gallery'. The work is never seen again and the students don't know what this process is about, but Ishiguro initially suggests that it is proof of something good. Like Masuji Ono in An Artist of the Floating World, is Ishiguro trying to say that art – or creativity – is redemptive?

"I've always been aware that art is one of the major ways in which we try to give meaning to our lives. In this book the art doesn't do that; it doesn't help them in a practical sense. It's the same with love, because love and art – and by art I mean anything that's a vehicle for expression or that gives people a sense of meaning – are two things in life that we focus on because they give us a sense of dignity and achievement. Sometimes we try to believe that they can achieve more than they actually can."

The book is already being tipped as an early contender for the Booker Prize, something Ishiguro is unconcerned about.

"I just ignore that stuff," he laughs, "I was nominated so much early in my career that I was branded as an applicant for the Booker! I was relieved when I actually won it for The Remains of the Day."

Like his Booker-winning novel, there are plans to adapt Never Let Me Go for the big screen.

"We're very close to the end of negotiations for the films rights with a very exciting team but I'm not allowed to say anything about it until it's all finalised," he adds.