It has been three days since I put down Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro) , and yet the book lingers – insisting that I pause, sit with it, and reflect.

At first glance, it is a dystopian novel, a genre I hadn’t revisited since my teenage years. It tells the story of three friends—Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy—who grow up in a residential school, learning art, poetry, and literature. Their lives revolve around friendships, first loves, and the fragile hierarchies of childhood cliques.

Gradually, layer by layer, something deeply sinister is revealed. These children are clones, bred solely for organ donation. They are not considered human by the rest of society. They exist as resources—tools created to ease humanity’s suffering and extend its lifespan.

Their roles are clearly defined. Their lives meticulously planned. After leaving school, they train for a few years before beginning organ donations. Most do not survive beyond their fourth donation. At that point, they are said to be “completed”—a euphemism for death.

This is the normal in Kathy’s world.

What is most unsettling is not just the cruelty of the system, but the absence of rebellion. Never once does Kathy openly question the injustice of it all. The clones have accepted the roles assigned to them. They have resigned themselves to the script written for their bodies.

On the surface, the novel appears to be about the ethics of scientific advancement at the expense of sentient beings. But as the story settles in, it becomes clear that it is asking far broader questions.

We, too, are born into systems that dictate what we are supposed to do with our lives. The script is handed to us early, and we learn it by heart. We are expected to work hard, earn money, and spend it on acceptable forms of happiness. We are expected to reproduce, to conform, to maintain our bodies according to shifting aesthetic standards—our waists, our skin, our noses.

Women have borne the brunt of this control.

In a patriarchal world that has always sought authority over women’s bodies, expectations around how a woman should live, reproduce, and sacrifice herself remain rigid. Is it any surprise that female sterilization is nearly a hundred times more common than male sterilization in India? Women are routinely expected to surrender bodily autonomy for the “greater good” of a society that rarely treats them as fully human.

Like the clones in Never Let Me Go, women are often asked not to protest, not to disrupt, not to question the inevitability of what is demanded of them.

Perhaps the most important question the book leaves us with is this: should we accept the script simply because it has always been there?

And if the script does not serve us—if it diminishes us—might it still be worth trying to flip it, even if we are not entirely successful?