Reading 1001 discussion

read Aug 2019

This is a beautiful and complex novel; and I am honestly feeling stunned by it (having just finished it). However, I don’t know if I could really tell anyone what it is about. It is a mix of memory, resilience (of people having gone through war), and trying to move on in the face of terrible circumstances (suicide).

I knew nothing about this book before I read it, and I’m glad I didn’t because it would be easy to spoil it. Not because of plot revelations but maybe because of opinions as to what Ishiguro was trying to achieve. This is a book that it is better to enter blindly and immerse yourself in. 5*

A Pale View of Hills is Ishiguro's first novel. The slight volume is written largely in dialogue and remembrances from the primary character Etsuko. Etsuko is living alone in England after leaving Nagasaki with both her daughters, one born from a marriage to a Japanese business man and one from a marriage with the person she left to go to England with. Niki, her second born is visiting and they mention the suicide of the first born Keiko although it is always muted by the different perspectives they each have on that event.
However, the overwhelming power of the book is the way in which Ishiguro tangles Etsuko's memories of a Japanese neighbor Sachiko and her daughter Mariko with Etsuko's own life and circumstances. Is Etsuko projecting her own life onto another, or were the two women caught together in the post war horrors of no longer knowing what is expected of them or how to move forward appropriately. For example, they both speak of being good mothers but in fact, they both seem to realize that they are not good mothers. The bombing of Nagasaki overhangs the whole book but is rarely mentioned. The breakdown of the traditional Japanese society, with its strong sense of honor and hierarchy, is reflected in every single event in the book but is also rarely directly discussed. Yet Ishiguro manages to create a dark fog of loss, bewilderment, and even a mysterious fear throughout the book and he does it between the lines and life stories of Etsuko's memories.

I found this book powerfully atmospheric and unsettling. Etsuko lived through the bombing of Nagasaki, and as an older adult living in England with one grown-up daughter and another who has killed herself, Etsuko seems emotionally frozen, as if something has split off inside her.

In her memories of herself and a female friend in the early days of her marriage, Etsuko still seems warm - affectionate to her father-in-law, worried about a friend's child - while her friend Sachiko, a few years further on in life, already has that coldness.

The last chapter blurs them in a way that I struggled to understand until I read a lengthy assessment of the book. I'm still not sure but I think Ishiguro wanted to instil a sense of bewilderment in the reader that reflects Etsuko's own existential bewilderment, as if she is trapped behind glass and cannot engage and doesn't know why.

Reason read: TBR takedown, Reading 1001.
This was Ishiguro's debut novel. It is set in post WWII. To me it is a story of family and changes in family following the war. It also explores the suicide death of a daughter. It is a bit scrambled with past and present mixed up so that does make the story line a bit hard to follow. Over all I did enjoy the book.

Ishiguro’s debut novel demonstrates both the subtle restrained style and the themes of memory, guilt and broken family units that characterise many of his later works. The narrator, Etsuko, is living alone in England and receives a visit from her daughter Niki. They discuss Etsuko’s elder daughter by her first (Japanese) husband who has committed suicide, and Etsuko looks back to her time living in Nagasaki after the War and her friendship with single mother Sachiko.

Etsuko is the epitome of an unreliable narrator - from the outset she admits that her memory is partial and somewhat muddled, but the reader only realises towards the end how much she may have misremembered or misrepresented events from her past, and how these events have impacted her life with Keiko and Niki. Ishiguro spins his web masterfully, teasing us with seemingly trivial episodes that later assume significance and snatches of conversation that arouse suspicion that all is not as it seems, culminating in a stunning grammatical twist that finally reveals the underlying truth.

Alongside this complex and compelling storyline, Ishiguro also examines the state of Japan immediately after WWII, including the conflict between the values and actions of the older generation and those younger Japanese who will need to rebuild the country. The guilt and shame of the nation at the time is reflected in Etsuko’s conflicted feelings about her move to England and her relationship with her own daughters.

This is an immensely impressive debut and the ideas and approach of this book are developed further in masterpieces such as An Artist of the Floating World and The Remains of the Day. I love Ishiguro’s concepts and the way he expresses his ideas in such beautiful and sparing language, and this was another delight.