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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
Ishiguro I love you. And I hate you. And then I love you again. And hate you again.
Oh gosh, where are my medications?
Mr Ryder, a pianist, arrives in town to perform.
During the first half of the novel I took some pity on him and really hated the town folks. Maybe I picture myself in Ryder's shoes: I, too, have problem to say no when people ask me favours (and I don't have really any reason to say no), but I hate time-stealers. That's what all these persons looked to me: time-stealers. Ryder is a musician, not the messiah! He's not here to solve anyone's problem, but that's what people wants from him. There is this feeling that our man, since famous, could bring improvement to the whole town. The porters of all the hotel wants him to address their situation during the speech is going to give before is performance. The wife wants to buy a house. The hotel manager wants him to switch room. And everyone want to spend some time with him: they invite him for coffee, tea, for improve one's reputation by saying they have a connection with the visiting star. He says yes to everyone and meet almost none of his appointments.
Finally, the night of the performance arrive. Now we get into an LSD scenario: the whole town is waiting for this evening and Ryder is everywhere but on stage. After a gruesome amputation of a prosthetic leg (what?!?), forgotten parents, a broken marriage and a commuter cable car with a buffet in the back (what?!? I want one!) the drama is finally over and Ryder is ready to flight to Helsinki...
... I wanna go with him!
It's been a hard and rewarding reading. Ishiguro masters the arts or turning the absurdity into normality. There's not a sane character in this book, but I liked them all. And they all irritated me in their peculiar way. But the thing that really got me is the use of the time. You read on and read on, and just few minutes have passed in Ryder life. You watch the dawn with him, but it's still night into the concert all. You walk with him, drive with him, jumps up and down public transportation with him, open parenthesis after parenthesis and you're never late.
The same people that worship Ryder in public seem to forget who he is in private. They value is opinion on very trivial matters and disregard it on topics he knows well, such as art or music.
I think I'll write a little more tomorrow, but I really have to sleep over it now
Oh gosh, where are my medications?
Mr Ryder, a pianist, arrives in town to perform.
Spoiler
But he doesn't know exactly where he is, or what the town name is. He moves through a series of people and events, being never fully aware of what's happening to him. He meets the porter of the hotel, and guess what? Later on we'll find out their related. Because the porter asks him to speak with her daughter, to give her some advice, and while doing so Mr Ryder "remembers" that this woman is his wife, and her son Boris is also his son. And this goes on for the entire novel: Ryder meets strangers that suddenly turns into acquaintances, or even friends. Ryders moves from a place to another, and suddenly remembers a task, a promise, something to do that brings him to another place and another task. If I were him I would have booked an MRI before page 100. But no, Mr Ryder's aplomb is absolute. He always find a reasonable explanation. He's writing to his home, where his wife and son lives, and he suddenly realize he doesn't know where they live. He takes the child to a café and forgets him there while dealing with some journalists. He enter buildings and doesn't remember which door leads where.During the first half of the novel I took some pity on him and really hated the town folks. Maybe I picture myself in Ryder's shoes: I, too, have problem to say no when people ask me favours (and I don't have really any reason to say no), but I hate time-stealers. That's what all these persons looked to me: time-stealers. Ryder is a musician, not the messiah! He's not here to solve anyone's problem, but that's what people wants from him. There is this feeling that our man, since famous, could bring improvement to the whole town. The porters of all the hotel wants him to address their situation during the speech is going to give before is performance. The wife wants to buy a house. The hotel manager wants him to switch room. And everyone want to spend some time with him: they invite him for coffee, tea, for improve one's reputation by saying they have a connection with the visiting star. He says yes to everyone and meet almost none of his appointments.
Finally, the night of the performance arrive. Now we get into an LSD scenario: the whole town is waiting for this evening and Ryder is everywhere but on stage. After a gruesome amputation of a prosthetic leg (what?!?), forgotten parents, a broken marriage and a commuter cable car with a buffet in the back (what?!? I want one!) the drama is finally over and Ryder is ready to flight to Helsinki...
... I wanna go with him!
The same people that worship Ryder in public seem to forget who he is in private. They value is opinion on very trivial matters and disregard it on topics he knows well, such as art or music.
I think I'll write a little more tomorrow, but I really have to sleep over it now
Did not actually finish but that's as far as I'm getting.
challenging
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
I have never read anything that made me so frustrated and anxious. A masterpiece.
It’s fully dissociative and dreamlike. I couldn’t help but laughing every time a new character appeared to pluck Ryder away to another unforeseen appointment. I don’t love it for anything I’ve taken away from reading it, but I love it for how it plays with how a novel should behave.
It’s fully dissociative and dreamlike. I couldn’t help but laughing every time a new character appeared to pluck Ryder away to another unforeseen appointment. I don’t love it for anything I’ve taken away from reading it, but I love it for how it plays with how a novel should behave.
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I liked it but it felt like a nightmare.
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
600 page nightmare sequence
challenging
funny
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A novel that certainly caused a lot of confusion for me. It reads like you are dreaming in the sense that the places are malleable, the distances make no sense, time seems to expand in order to have way too many things happen in way too little time, the way people interact with or talk about Ryder right in front of him sometimes is unrealistic and ridiculous, Ryder seems to know things and have insight into past experiences about other people that he shouldn't be able know/have, like he is the omniscient narrator and the other people are his invented characters. Ryder's whole character in general is very confusing as he seems to be suffering from some sort of memory loss that is never explained or really explored - he is seemingly but a visitor to a city he has never been to before and yet it is the city in which his, presumably, wife, son, and father-in-law live. And yet he meets his father-in-law as if for the first time and at first also has no recollection of his wife and son upon first meeting them. Gradually, Ryder seems to recall things about them and their flat, but it feels like you're constantly making a grab for some memories that are just out of reach. Basically, the novel has dream logic - the kind of 'logic' that makes perfect sense while you are dreaming, but once you wake up you realise just how absurd everything was.
Despite not really enjoying whatever was going on in the novel as it was frankly a bit too confusing and nonsensical to me, the writing was still very much effective considering I got really invested and simply had to know how the novel was going to finish and how Ryder's performance was going to go. I also felt increasingly stressed out and anxious about the continuous interruptions to Ryder's plans and schedule, which at least proves that Ishiguro's writing is certainly immersive and the characters would not let me go until I had finished the book.
That being said, I don't think I'll ever revisit the novel, but I don't regret reading it as it was certainly a hell of a ride.
Despite not really enjoying whatever was going on in the novel as it was frankly a bit too confusing and nonsensical to me, the writing was still very much effective considering I got really invested and simply had to know how the novel was going to finish and how Ryder's performance was going to go. I also felt increasingly stressed out and anxious about the continuous interruptions to Ryder's plans and schedule, which at least proves that Ishiguro's writing is certainly immersive and the characters would not let me go until I had finished the book.
That being said, I don't think I'll ever revisit the novel, but I don't regret reading it as it was certainly a hell of a ride.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Alcoholism, Bullying, Death, Car accident
I have enjoyed every Kazuo Ishiguro book I've read (almost every novel he's written), but this was almost impossible to get through. Ishiguro himself even referred to it as not his best work.
The Unconsoled deals with missed chances, just like every Ishiguro book. It also deals with a narrator who begins in a constrictive box of his own making, only to have a bizarre reality slowly unfold. Just like every Ishiguro book. But it feels like a plot-less bad dream where you just get more lost and off-track for 500 pages, all the while worrying about what you originally set out to do. As much as I have enjoyed Ishiguro and it pains me to say, it is just a slog.
The Unconsoled deals with missed chances, just like every Ishiguro book. It also deals with a narrator who begins in a constrictive box of his own making, only to have a bizarre reality slowly unfold. Just like every Ishiguro book. But it feels like a plot-less bad dream where you just get more lost and off-track for 500 pages, all the while worrying about what you originally set out to do. As much as I have enjoyed Ishiguro and it pains me to say, it is just a slog.
