Kazuo Ishiguro · 2005 · exile

Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 novel, set in an England that is almost ours. Kathy H is thirty-one and has been a carer for eleven years, and looks back on a boarding school where the children were told about their futures constantly and never quite told - and where nobody, at any point, tries to run.

1. 1
   Hailsham

   The school: pavilions, poplars, a gallery, and guardians who are careful never to lie and never to explain. Ishiguro never says where it is, and former students who go looking are never sure they have found it.

2. 2
   The Cottages

   A converted farm where they are sent at sixteen, cold and shabby after Hailsham, with older students who were not at Hailsham and treat those who were with a sort of awe - and the first stretch of anything like freedom.

3. 3
   Norfolk

   They drive up on a rumour that Ruth's possible works in an open-plan office, and it is not her - and Norfolk is also the lost corner of England, where the children were told everything lost eventually turns up.

4. 4
   Littlehampton

   Madame's house on the coast, where Kathy and Tommy go years later to ask for a deferral on the grounds that they are in love - and are told there was never any such thing, and given the reason Hailsham existed at all.

5. 5
   Dover

   The recovery centre where Tommy completes, and Kathy driving between centres afterwards with the tape playing - and pulling over in a field in Norfolk once, and then getting back in the car and going where she is supposed to.