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A Pale View of Hills |
This is Ishiguro's first novel recently reissued by Faber and as elusive and as captivating as his later works. The narrator, middle-aged Etsuko, shifts between her present life in England and her memories of one hot summer just after WW II in Nagasaki which conjure up her relationship with a mysterious woman and her strange, little daughter. As in a dream we are never quite sure what is happening or quite who anyone is.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 52 July 2009) |
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An Artist of the Floating World |
The year is 1948 and post-war Japan is in the process of rebuilding itself. The renowned Japanese painter, Masiyi Ono has just retired and is looking forward to a peaceful retirement filled with gardening, family time, and meeting up with old associates. However, with time to contemplate his earlier life and career, Masiyi's own doubts begin to cast dark shadows over his past. Exquisitely written.
(Sharron Calkins - bwl 89 Summer 2018) |
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Klara and the Sun |
It's a masterstroke that Klara the humanoid robot, who is as much in the dark as we are as to what is going on, is the narrator. The absorbing plot prompts all sorts of reflections about what it is to be human with our imperfections and compromises and what happens to the robot throws up thought provoking parallels with human life. In the background, a future and not very sympathetic society is sketched in. A deceptively simple story, straightforwardly told, turns out to be something more.
(Tony Pratt - bwl 100 Spring 2021) |
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Klara and the Sun |
Klara is a robot with depth. She is an AF, an Artificial Friend, whose existence is to keep companionship to Josie, a very ill young girl. As the story unfolds we learn why AFs are necessary to be companions to the children of the world. Klara is the narrator of this story and her observations of life and what it is to be human is what makes this novel. It reminded me of his other dystopian science fiction work Never Let Me Go.
(Claire Bane - bwl 100 Spring 2021) |
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Nocturnes: Five stories of Music and Nightfall |
Ishiguro's first venture into short story writing and the writing is as elegant as ever. The stories are about relationships not music per se and the sadness within each is tempered with moments of comedy. The book also looks at what makes a success (celebrity) today - a facelift or a younger woman perhaps. I have enjoyably dipped into it more than once.
(Christine Miller - bwl 57 Summer 2010) |
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The Buried Giant |
Post-Arthurian Britain: here are Sir Gawain now grown old, a mysterious Warrior and a boy bewitched. A strange mist from a dragon's breath engulfs the land. No one remembers quite who they are or where they began. Axl and Beatrice search for their long-lost son unaware that their journey will reveal submerged secrets they might prefer to forget. Can their love survive even as the boatman prepares to ferry them away? A strange, mystical and hypnotic book.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 85 Summer 2017) |
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When we were Orphans |
It could have been a detective novel: you have the clever detective, international settings (London and old Shanghai) and the 1930s. The clever detective is going back to China to try to discover the truth about the long ago disappearance of his parents and he will discover it but then the book ends in a poignant tragedy. This is a classic, beautiful and moving.
(Laurence Martin Euler - bwl 8 April 2001) |
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