Whitehead examines Kazuo Ishiguro's sixth novel, Never Let Me Go. Narrated by thirty-one-year-old Kathy H., the novel looks back to her life at the boarding school of Hailsham and the close friendships that she developed there with her fellow schoolmates Tommy and Ruth. Ishiguro's novel complicates the vision of the humanities and to a large extent unravels the connections that Martha Nussbaum makes between reading, empathy, caring, and the healthy society. Ishiguro's alternative England requires absolute passivity and acquiescence from the clones, whom it has created entirely for the purposes of organ harvesting once they reach maturity. Although reading works of Victorian fiction may cultivate good "carers," this outcome exacts a considerable price; their contact with the Victorian novel also offers the clones an inappropriate imaginative template of social advancement that raises false hopes in a society that denies them any future.