What is the importance of setting in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go?

In 'Never Let Me Go', Kazuo Ishiguro uses space as a physical representation of the central character's disconnection and ostracisation. In his reimagining of an alternate past, Ishiguro explores a world where genetic modification has been extended to allow clones to harvest viral organs for sick members of society. The novel's settings reflect this position of inclusion and exclusion, existing in peripheral, suburban locations outside the city. All three central settings, Hailsham, the cottages and the hospital, are as uncanny and as 'unreal' as the clones themselves, made to present as one thing but exist as another. They are institutions designed to give the illusion of care and nurture, which in reality exist to control and restrict. Despite the increasing illusion of freedom as the clones leave Hailsham, the physical landscape remains a roadblock against movement for Kathy, Tommy and Ruth. As properties of the state their role in society is as fixed as the institutions they abode, they remain as permanently 'outside' and 'othered' from society as the spaces they exist in. This essay argues that through the novel's controlled and marginalised setting, Ishiguro signals to the reader the clones' pseudo-imprisonment and their futility of escape from this fate.