 macabre, 2008-02-07
I read this having never read his books before but have always loved the 'remains of the day' film version. At first I felt dissatisfied with the ending but later (a day later) it made more sense. For some reason parts of the story especially the part where a memory on the bridge is revealed made my 'hair stand on end'. Other parts were even funny but for the most part it felt eerie and sad.To me the horror lay in the presence of evil or percieved evil despite one's best intentions.
 Pay Attention, 2007-03-26
Having read "Never Let Me Go" and "The Remains of the Day", I was expecting a novel that left me asking questions and would make me feel a little bit empty. I was not wrong.
That is not to say that Kazuo Ishigur's novels are bad. Far from it. But if you expect to put this novel down with a neat happy ending and no questions you'll be disappointed and confused.
You really need to pay attention to the novel to understand it, there are sublte hints which at first might not make much sense, but do not dismiss them out of hand.
If you're still missing the plot there's plenty of online sources out there which will explain the plot to you in a little more detail, but don't look at these until you've finished the book.
When it all falls into place I'll guarantee you'll see why this book is actually far more intelligent than it originally seems.
Shadows Across The River, 2008-02-10
Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki in 1954 and moved to Britain at the age of five. He was awarded the OBE in 1995 and the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1998. "A Pale View of the Hills" is his first book, and he has gone on to win the Whitbread Prize (with "An Artist of the Floating World") and the Booker Prize (with "The Remains of the Day").
"A Pale View of the Hills" is told by Etsuko, a Japanese widow now living in England. Keiko, Etsuko's daughter from her first marriage, was born in Japan though had later moved to England with her mother. She later moved to Manchester, where she had recently committed suicide. Niki - her daughter from her second marriage to her English husband - currently lives in London. Niki and Keiko were never close, to the point where Niki felt she couldn't attend the funeral. Keiko, in fact, she appears to have kept herself isolated - even when living at home, she wouldn't have been seen by her family for days at a time. Part of the book deals with Etsuko's current relationship with Niki, and their attempts to come to terms with Keiko's death.
Recent events have also led to Etsuko looking back to when she was pregnant with Keiko. The war was only recently over and she was living in Nagasaki with her first husband, Jiro. The couple were living in a recently built block of apartments, close to the river - though right beside a large patch of very unhygienic wasteground. At the far end of the wasteground, on the banks of the river, was a lone wooden cottage that had somehow survived both the war and the city's planners. For a short period, during the summer, that cottage was home to a woman called Sachiko - someone Etsuko came to consider a friend. Sachiko was originally from Tokyo, though had been in Nagasaki for around a year. Until her arrival at the cottage, she had been staying at an Uncle's house in a different part of the city - though she proves a little vague as to why she left such comfortable surroundings for such a dilapidated cottage. She doesn't appear to be a caring mother either - Mariko doesn't go to school and she's regularly left without a babysitter. In fact, Mariko seems to care more for her cat and kittens than she is cared for by her mother. (Mariko does speak of a mysterious woman who apparently lives in the woods and calls round when her mother goes out - this, however, is dismissed as a figment of her imagination by Sachiko). In time, Etsuko learns a little more of her new friend's past and her plans for the future - including a life in America with a man called Frank.
The same summer, Etsuko's father-in-law came to stay. Ogata-San is a retired teacher, and he proves a likeable character. While he's not in the same position as Sachiko, he is struggling a little with how attitudes have changed in post-war Japan. Ogata-San is a little troubled by an article he stumbled across in a magazine for teachers. The article had been written by one of Jiro's former school-friend, Shiego Matsuda, and had suggested that teachers like himself should have been dismissed at the end of the war. Ogata-San is naturally offended - Matsuda had spent a great deal of time at the Ogata house as a boy, and Ogata-San himself had introduced Matsuda to his current employer. He's hoping that Jiro will insist on an apology from his old friend.
A little frustratingly, there are a few loose ends that aren't tied up - it's only really hinted at how Etsuko's first marriage came to an end and how she met her second husband, for example. I also wondered about Etsuko's father-in-law, and how he felt about her decision to leave Japan for England - the pair had clearly been very close. Nevertheless, while it's not a cheerful book, "A Pale View of the Hills" is a well worth reading.
It doesn't matter how old someone is, it's what they've experienced that counts, 2008-04-05
Under the surface of apparently harmless conversations, the author uncovers Japan's `very strict and very patriotic' old world of `discipline, loyalty, such things held Japan together once. People were bound by a sense of duty. Towards one's family, towards superiors, towards the country.'
But, in fact, it was a rigid, cold world without pity (symbolized by the merciless drowning of the kittens), where `children were taught terrible things. They were taught lies of the most damaging kind. Worst of all, they were taught not to see, not to question'. It was a world without democracy, where women could not study.
It all ended in disaster: `And that's why the country was plunged into the most evil disaster in her entire history.' A general disaster of war ('Towards the end we were all living in tunnels and derelict buildings and there was nothing but rubble') and atom bombs (`I know it was a terrible thing that happened here in Nagasaki'), and painful personal and familial disasters (suicides, even of a child).
In his brilliant indirect, but nevertheless emotional, suggestive style Kazuo Ishiguro wrote a masterpiece.
Quality Creative Writing, 2006-12-13
This, Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel, is similar at face value to his better known works The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go but, on closer inspection, is darker in tone and very different in its approach. The novel is the memoir of Etsuko, a woman who has left Japan for England after World War II. Without much in the way of explicitly narrated action, the reader is left to join the dots of her experiences, gaining insight into Japan's fractured post-war culture along the way. Unlike the narrators in the aforementioned later works, Etsuko does not naively misunderstand the importance of events in her life. On the contrary, she is a tortured character. She is all too aware of the scars she has been left with and is tentatively trying to explore where they came from.
Many readers accuse A Pale View of Hills of making no sense. It makes sense once you know that Ishiguro wrote it straight after taking an MA in Creative Writing. The reason the book is so beloved of English students is also its greatest weakness: read it meticulously enough and you can easily see the main ploys Ishiguro has used to toy with his readers. There's no need to read it twice.
The book follows a well-trodden "modern" path, exploring the unreliable mind of a narrator for whom past trauma leaves an imprint on every memory. Different chapters in the narrator's life are interleaved to throw recurring cultural clashes and emotional crises into sharp relief. Emotive symbolism mixes with classic horror motifs ("to keep the reader's attention," you can almost hear his lecturer saying) and result is a subtle cocktail, part disturbing enigma, part beautifully understated character study. In the end, however, you'll want to say: Very clever Kazuo. But where's the plot? Where's the substance? It was to come in later novels.
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