Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro is one of my newest favorite authors not only because his prose is perfect, his characters complex and sympathetic, his plots compelling, and his themes thought-provoking, but also because he defies genre distinctions. I was first introduced to Ishiguro in 1993 with the film version of ‘Remains of the Day.’ I didn’t feel moved to read the book because the story was so sad.
A few months ago my book club
selected ‘Klara and the Sun,’ Ishiguro’s latest novel. I think it may be his
best so far.
Klara is an AF (artificial
friend) waiting to be chosen when 14-year-old Josie sees her in a store window.
Klara waits expectantly for Josie to return and take her home. When she does,
Klara believes that things will be wonderful for the two of them. However,
Josie has bouts of a mysterious illness that keep her bedridden for weeks at a
time. Klara concludes that if she asks in just the right way, the Sun will use
his special nourishment to cure Josie and save her life.
The themes of this novel have
to do with love and mortality, but the secondary issues--pollution,
consumerism, gene editing, economic displacement, and distrust of others--left
me hoping for sequels in the coming years.
‘Klara’ was labeled Young
Adult, but like any good YA book, it is just as appealing to adult readers.
Some might label ‘Klara’ as science fiction since it is set in some
undetermined future and includes not-yet-invented technology.
Since I loved ‘Klara’ so
much, I then read some of Ishiguro’s earlier works, including ‘Never Let Me
Go,’ which also might be labeled sci-fi. And it, too, has been adapted to the
screen, although I’ve not seen the movie.
The story opens when Kathy is
ending her unusually long career as a carer after attending her childhood
friends, Tommy and Ruth, through "completion." She recalls their
childhoods in Hailsham, and later at the Cottages. Their "guardians"
at Hailsham teach them that they are special, but outsiders shun them, even
seem afraid of them.
Although Kathy and her
friends are doomed to a pretty grim fate, they do nothing to escape it. They
are not imprisoned and can simply run away, but they don’t. They accept their
fate with dignity and compassion. Ishiguro’s insightful portrayal of people
resigned to a hopeless future demonstrate his keen understanding of human
nature and human failings.
Like ‘Remains of the Day,’
‘When We Were Orphans’ is ostensibly “mainstream literary fiction.” Famous
London detective Christopher Banks recalls his childhood in Shanghai and the
disappearances of his parents when he was nine years old. He spends 20 years
researching his most pressing case and finally returns to Shanghai to solve the
mystery and rescue his parents.
The narrator's voice is
objective, sometimes detached, as you would expect from a detective. However,
the mystery of his parents is secondary. This novel is really an examination of
the fallibility of memory and how people delude themselves.
‘The Buried Giant,’ which
might be labeled fantasy, is the strangest and perhaps the darkest of
Ishiguro’s novels.
Iron-age Britons Axl and
Beatrice leave their village to visit their grown son in another village, a
three-day walk from them. On the way they encounter ogres, pixies, King
Arthur’s knight Sir Gawain, and other strange and mysterious creatures and
people. They lament that they cannot really remember their son because of a
“dense mist which hung over the marshes” that clouds everyone’s mind so that
they cannot recall things that happened even a few days or hours ago.
This strange and entrancing
story offers interesting characters, plot twists, and an exploration of
importance and purpose of memory and of forgetting. The dark and ambiguous
ending will make readers reevaluate the strength of their relationships.
Moreover, Ishiguro has two other novels that might be called
historical, ‘A Pale View of Hills,’ and ‘An Artist of the Floating World.’
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