Image: Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel is one of the most highly anticipated literary events of the year. The author of very different novels including The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go had fans wondering what he would do next.
Ishiguro told The Paris Review that he had ‘wanted for some time to write a novel about how societies remember and forget … I’d written about how individuals come to terms with uncomfortable memories. It occurred to me that the way an individual remembers and forgets is quite different to the way a society does. When is it better to forget?’
The book certainly deals with these issues but it is also much more than remembering and forgetting. After the first few pages the reader is totally immersed in early sixth-century England, a time not long after King Arthur has died. It is easy to identify with the lives of a couple of elderly Britons, to feel the cold and the wind, the dark nights and rainy days. So the reader is drawn into wanting to help them retrieve their forgotten memories.
As the story unfolds we meet Saxons and learn of strange creatures. We journey with the elderly couple through the largely untamed English countryside as they valiantly strive to reach their goal without compromising their integrity on the way. With them you learn something of the recent past and the political problems of their time.
Kazuo Ishiguro’s characters speak an easily understood archaic form of English which helps to keep the reader firmly in the historical setting. But the humanity of the individuals is as powerful as in a contemporary novel. There are no types as so often happens when an author slips into historicism. We relate to them as if they were living today. Given the circumstances in which they find themselves, they behave as the people around us would, be they good, bad or anything in between. Many facets of human nature are starkly revealed.
Once you have read this book you will want to read it again.
