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When We Were Orphans |
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Author:
Kazuo Ishiguro
By Faber and Faber
Average Customer Rating:  
List Price: £7.99
Our Price: £0.39
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780571225408
ISBN: 0571225403
Label: Faber and Faber
Manufacturer: Faber and Faber
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 2005-03-03
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Studio: Faber and Faber |
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Amazon.co.uk Review
"... I've worked hard over the years to check the spread of crime and evil wherever it has manifested itself." Christopher Banks, the protagonist of Kazuo Ishiguro's fifth novel, When We Were Orphans, has dedicated his life to detective work but behind his successes lies one unsolved mystery: the disappearance of his parents when he was a small boy living in the International Settlement in Shanghai. Moving between England and China in the inter-war period, the book, encompassing the turbulence and political anxieties of the time and the crumbling certainties of a Britain deeply involved in the opium trade in the East, centres on Banks's idealistic need to make sense of the world through the small victories of detection and his need to understand finally what happened to his mother and father. This new novel, however, is the deliberate antithesis of the classic English detective story--the hermetic country-house worlds of Agatha Christie, the classic "locked room" puzzles in which order and sanity is restored at the story's end. Ishiguro mimics the functional style and clipped speech patterns of the genre, ironising its reliance on melodrama and stereotype, while developing a narrative of subtlety, great emotional depth, and political and cultural acuity: what we get is a negative image of classic detective fiction, in which the solved crimes are mentioned in passing and the real mystery is played out in the psychology of the detective himself. The act of detection, Ishiguro suggests, is one we all perform on our own past, struggling to marshal clues and evidence whilst trying to construct the story of ourselves; the one mystery Banks seems unable to solve is his own. If Ishiguro's concerns as a writer remain broadly the same as in previous novels such as his Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day--the complexities, instability and elusiveness of memory, dramatised through a first-person narrator--this new book shows how flexible and powerful the form has become for him. Banks' quest is both deeply personal and resonantly emblematic of us all: ...for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm. When We Were Orphans is an astonishing book, rich and profound on many levels, and one that will live clearly in the memory of all who read it. --Burhan Tufail
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Elementary, 2007-06-03
Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans revisits the classically English detective novel, mimicking and deliberately undermining the style of authors like Agatha Christie. It uses this simple subtext to show how the global catastrophe of the second world war finally destroyed the quaint notion that evil and criminality could be overcome by logic and reason. Whereas America had Superman, Ishiguro might argue, England had Miss Marple and Poirot, and in the same way that America has had its heros brutally examined, Ishiguro tries to do something similar here. Christopher Banks, the frustratingly stiff narrator, embodies many of the English class stereotypes that are perpetuated by the novels of Agatha Christie and their televisual adaptations. Hardly a sympathetic voice, he is by turns haughty and superior, but most often laughably naive. Orphaned as a boy when his parents disappear from the international settlement in Shanghai, he resolves to become a 'great detective'. His apparent elevation to this status is described in the most simplistic and perfunctary manner, and the facile (elementary even) account of his investigative abilities continues as he tries to uncover the mystery of his parent's kidnapping. Many readers have pointed out that this is a deliberate parody that sets the the narrator and reader up for the jarring realities of the final third of the book. I would argue that Ishiguro is incapable of creating a convincing detective mystery with the clues, red herrings and ingenious deductions necessary to evoke the genre. He attempts to satirise the genre, but is impatient to undermine it before he has created any kind of puzzle or suspense to the narrative. A far-greater novel could have been made if he had mastered some of the principles of Agatha Christie's books first, before pulling the rug out from under the readers' feet. Narrational changes are hinged upon things as basic as someone 'suddenly remembering', making for a clumsily facile first two thirds, incredulous and difficult to invest in emotionally.
The protagonist's subsequent descent into the chaos of the Japanese invasion of Shanghai, and the decadence and despondency of the international community there, is more intriguing. The seedy underbelly of Shanghai is exposed in a series of increasingly sordid revelations, from elicit gambling dens to the factions vying for control of the opium trade devestating China. But Banks's naivety becomes increasingly implausible as he staggers around front line Shanghai armed with only a magnifying glass to aid his search for his parents - who he bewilderingly believes to be still held captive decades after their disapperance. There is a heavy dose of irony in this, but to the expense of real dramatic tension or feeling. In the ultimate revelation concerning the fate of his parents, Banks is confronted by his nemesis: "A detective! What good is that to anyone? Stolen jewels, aristocrats murdered for their inheritance. Do you suppose that's all there is to contend with?" It is here Ishiguro's intentions become explicit, but by this point I was past caring. Too much weak plotting and insincerity had conspired to make this no more than an average novel.
Third Culture, yes, but a pleasant read, no..., 2008-01-31
As a Third Culture Kid, and someone who takes an interest in the phenomenon of people who grew up internationally, I was pointed to this novel as an illustration of TCKs in literature.
And while established characteristics of Third Culture Kids are mentioned often in the book, with rather great detail... They seem entirely unrelated to the character of Christopher Banks. This is the case to the point that the whole plot seems confused. After all, it could have just been a mediocre detective novel set entirely in England, with all of the same motivations.
So the character of the protagonist just doesn't feel believable at all. The characters of a number of others mentioned don't feel believable, in the same way that they feel caricatured and made only to serve whatever purpose to advance the plot. And that plot loses its place constantly.
We're jumped from an England which apparently believes that detectivism is the key to destroying evil, to a Shanghai which apparently thinks a 30-year-old mystery still matters, to being surrounded by people who might actually believe that some random kidnapper would have kept people for those 30 years and... to what point?
There are parts of the novel which speak meaningfully about the idealism which was crushed with war, or the difficulties Banks had as a hidden immigrant to England that no one seemed to understand... but it never ties in, and never feels important to a plot which never seemed to actually take off.
Oh dear, 2008-10-01
Like the other reviewers I'm a great fan of Ishiguro but this is just awful - I kept waiting for some point or purpose to emerge from the mannered pastiche of the style and the daftness of the plot; instead I felt that by the end even the author had given up trying to take it anywhere.
Western Delusion, 2007-05-17
Ishiguro is a good writer and this is an enjoyable and thought provoking read.I think people have got the wrong end of the stick complaining that elements of the plot don't make sense and that the language can be stilted. Events are being narrated by Christopher Banks, self-styled "greatest detective in England". The language takes us to England in the 1930s, supposedly at the height of empire, in reality just before those particular illusions were shattered. Of course Banks is completely deluded and it is unclear if people share his delusions or are just humouring him. At one level it could be seen as a swipe at Agatha Christie type detective stories or even superhero stories and people's need to have an "expert" or a "hero" come along and sort out the very complicated problems of the world. Banks's mission is ludicrous, as is the idea that its' successful completion could have any bearing whatsoever on the dangers facing the world in 1937. But aren't we all guilty of wishful thinking when faced with catastrophe? Or is Ishiguro making a point about Western imperialistic attitudes? The idea that the Western powers can sort out everyone else's problems, when really they haven't got a clue who anyone is, who their real friends are or what is really going on? For Christopher Banks stumbling through Shanghai read George and Tony in Iraq. For the delusions of Britain in the 1930s read the delusions of the USA today.
Puzzling, 2007-11-20
If all you know of Ishiguro is The Remains of the Day, be prepared to be startled. This is a strange, almost surrealistic novel, dealing in mysteries and confusion. The style, though modern, is forced into the narrative patterns of a traditional mystery novel, with a famous detective searching for clues amongst the rubble of a disintegrating country. It deals with the search of Christopher Banks for traces of his parents who disappeared in Shanghai.
It is a tricky book. The tone is unsettling, the plotting complex, and never wholly resolved. Whether this is a metaphor for Christopher's internal struggle is also never really clear. This is a book of beginnings and middles, but there are not a lot of satisfactory endings.
As ever with Ishiguro, it is well written and has that langurous quality which pervades his writing. I found it a frustrating read, and although not expecting a neat 'chocolate box' ending, would have at least like to have found some kind of resolution out of the wreckage. As it was I just found it vaguely unsatisfactory.
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