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Thoughts on The Buried Giant
I am currently 2/3 through The Buried Giant (2015), a fantasy novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. This is actually my seventh Ishiguro book. So far I have read *Never Let Me Go*, *The Unconsoled*, *The Remains of the Day*, *Nocturnes*, *Klara and the Sun*, and *A Pale View of Hills*.
Once I read an interview of his where he said he writes the same story over and over again but in different settings. I thought this was actually true. All of his books tackle grief, memory, nostalgia through an unreliable narrator. In Never Let Me Go, Kathy recollects her childhood and friendship, >!grieving her lost friends.!<Similarly, in The Remains of the Day, Stevens remembers his days of service as a butler, >!regretting supressing emotions and longing for unfulfilled love and companionship. !<To be fair, those themes are still highly relevant in The Buried Giant.
Besides the thematic connections, these novels also share the writing style and structure. All of them have a narrator which is the POV of a story (with an exception of some stories in Nocturnes, where a POV could retell a story told by their acquaintance). So to me they felt more personal and intimate. However, The Buried Giant immediately breaks this Ishiguro convention by introducing two main characters, Axel and Beatrice, a married couple. Neither of them is a POV, and the novel makes use of an external narrator to describe the story surrounding them. There are also a few supporting characters which have their own chapters, such as a young boy Edwin and Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur.
Another major difference is the book's medieval fantasy setting, which is unusual for Ishiguro, whose work is mostly grounded in the 20th and 21th centuries. There is a mist that covers Briton and Saxon villages, influencing the memories of those who live there. For instance, the main hook of the story is that Axel and Beatrice, an elderly couple, forget that they actually had a son! This is quite similar to The Unconsoled, where the main character can meet his wife, son, and father-in-law, not realizing they are part of his family. So in a sense both of these novels tend towards absurd scenes. But the difference is that, in The Unconsoled, they are not explained, yet in The Buried Giant, it is the mist that causes them forget their life.
The dialogues are also quite different, which is explainable, given the setting. I found some of the characters talking almost like Socrates (like Wistan teaching Edwin, or Gawain's monologues).
The overall tone, despite being magical, is somewhat bleak. So if all the previous Ishiguro books I read were sad, they didn't feel heavy but rather melancholic. This makes it me feel odd because Ishiguro books have been comfort books to me. But I am still enjoying it and intend to finish. I also feel like I might be missing some context, since I am not too well versed in Arthurian legends.
Just wanted to share some impressions. I am interested what you think of this book in the context of Ishiguro's other works. Feel free to give spoilers, as I actually don't mind them :)
#entertainment
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I am currently 2/3 through The Buried Giant (2015), a fantasy novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. This is actually my seventh Ishiguro book. So far I have read *Never Let Me Go*, *The Unconsoled*, *The Remains of the Day*, *Nocturnes*, *Klara and the Sun*, and *A Pale View of Hills*.
Once I read an interview of his where he said he writes the same story over and over again but in different settings. I thought this was actually true. All of his books tackle grief, memory, nostalgia through an unreliable narrator. In Never Let Me Go, Kathy recollects her childhood and friendship, >!grieving her lost friends.!<Similarly, in The Remains of the Day, Stevens remembers his days of service as a butler, >!regretting supressing emotions and longing for unfulfilled love and companionship. !<To be fair, those themes are still highly relevant in The Buried Giant.
Besides the thematic connections, these novels also share the writing style and structure. All of them have a narrator which is the POV of a story (with an exception of some stories in Nocturnes, where a POV could retell a story told by their acquaintance). So to me they felt more personal and intimate. However, The Buried Giant immediately breaks this Ishiguro convention by introducing two main characters, Axel and Beatrice, a married couple. Neither of them is a POV, and the novel makes use of an external narrator to describe the story surrounding them. There are also a few supporting characters which have their own chapters, such as a young boy Edwin and Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur.
Another major difference is the book's medieval fantasy setting, which is unusual for Ishiguro, whose work is mostly grounded in the 20th and 21th centuries. There is a mist that covers Briton and Saxon villages, influencing the memories of those who live there. For instance, the main hook of the story is that Axel and Beatrice, an elderly couple, forget that they actually had a son! This is quite similar to The Unconsoled, where the main character can meet his wife, son, and father-in-law, not realizing they are part of his family. So in a sense both of these novels tend towards absurd scenes. But the difference is that, in The Unconsoled, they are not explained, yet in The Buried Giant, it is the mist that causes them forget their life.
The dialogues are also quite different, which is explainable, given the setting. I found some of the characters talking almost like Socrates (like Wistan teaching Edwin, or Gawain's monologues).
The overall tone, despite being magical, is somewhat bleak. So if all the previous Ishiguro books I read were sad, they didn't feel heavy but rather melancholic. This makes it me feel odd because Ishiguro books have been comfort books to me. But I am still enjoying it and intend to finish. I also feel like I might be missing some context, since I am not too well versed in Arthurian legends.
Just wanted to share some impressions. I am interested what you think of this book in the context of Ishiguro's other works. Feel free to give spoilers, as I actually don't mind them :)
#entertainment
source
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