Amadan na Briona

This is technically science fiction, but the science fiction elements only slowly unfold as the first-person narrator talks about her job and reminisces about her school years at a posh British public school (or what Americans call a private school) called Hailsham. As she skips back and forth between seemingly inconsequential, even trivial events in her life, the story of Kathy H. and her friends Ruth and Tommy is woven into a bildungsroman of sorts, but by the time we reach the present day, we have grasped the true story beneath their stories, one that seems tragic and horrific to us outside observers, yet seems only the inevitable course of events to Kathy and her peers.

I'd probably give this 4.5 stars for the nearly perfect structure and the brilliant writing, minus 1/2 star because as a SF reader, I found the sad and anti-climactic ending (typical for literary novels, but less satisfying for genre novels) a tiny bit of a let-down, just because I felt there were still a few unanswered questions. But Ishiguro didn't set out to explain his worldbuilding, and this is a character study of people who only appear normal in circumstances that only seem mundane.