Read about the other entries on the list.Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
Here’s one that will break your heart. It’s definitely science fiction, but it subverts most of the tropes that go not only with science fiction, but with storytelling in general. It’s not about people witnessing the birth of a new era, and it’s definitely not about them changing their world. It’s about them quietly thinking about a situation that, to us, is unimaginable horror and to them is just the way the world works.
I can’t tell you more, and you probably shouldn’t tell the person you’re recommending it to more. Just tell them to brace themselves.
Never Let Me Go is on Sabrina Rojas Weiss's list of ten favorite boarding school novels, Allegra Frazier's top four list of great dystopian novels that made it to the big screen, James Browning's top ten list of boarding school books, Jason Allen Ashlock and Mink Choi's top ten list of tragic love stories, Allegra Frazier's list of seven characters whose jobs are worse than yours, Shani Boianjiu's list of five top novels about coming of age, Karen Thompson Walker's list of five top "What If?" books, Lloyd Shepherd's top ten list of weird histories, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best men writing as women in literature and ten of the best sentences as titles.
--Marshal Zeringue