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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Ishiguro channels his inner Kafka and adds a healthy dose of Lewis Carroll in this fantastical story.
The narrator-protagonist is Mr Ryder, a celebrated pianist, who arrives in an unnamed Central European city where he is due to give a speech and perform at a forthcoming concert. But as soon as he arrives at his hotel, things begin to go wrong. Hilde Stratmann has put together a busy schedule over the next few days but she doesn't share it with him. Instead, everyone he meets makes demands upon his time. The hotel porter Gustav, whose mission is to improve the status of hotel porters, wants him to meet his fellows at a local cafe where they collectively urge him to make a statement supporting their cause. Stephan, the son of the hotel manager wants Mr R to hear him play the piano and advise him if he is good enough to perform at the concert. Sophie, who seems to be Ryder's wife, wants him to look after Boris, her son, and Boris wants him to go back to their old apartment to find a toy that was left behind in the move. A newspaper photographer wants him to pose before a controversial monument and he agrees, despite being privy to a conversation which makes it clear he is being set-up. He is expected to mend the fractured relationship between an alcoholic orchestra conductor and his ex-wife. Etcetera.
It seems he cannot say no to anyone and in his endeavours to meet these multiple demands he crisscrosses the town and its surrounding countryside, never quite sure where he is going but often reaching his goal even though the landscape must shrink and twist and buckle like an Escher version of the Mobius strip for him to get there (this reminded me hugely of chapter 2 of Alice Through the Looking Glass when the paths in the garden twist and turn and Alice is advised that if she wants to get somewhere she should head in the opposite direction). And, of course, on each of his travels he meets new characters, including several plucked straight from his childhood, who make fresh and further demands upon him.
Usually, when he meets people, they treat him with respect and show that they expect great things of him, increasing the feeling that he is subject to demands that it will prove impossible to meet. But sometimes they ignore him completely and at other times he encounters hostility. Some characters discuss him as if he wasn't there. On other occasions he is able to follow characters and listen in to their discussions, understanding their thoughts, even though they are round a corner or inside a building where he cannot possibly have followed them. It's all incredibly surreal.
Doors, as in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, are portals into new places and new areas of experience. Except, perhaps, for the door into the broom cupboard which he opens by mistake even though he is well aware of the comedy trope about people walking into a broom cupboard by mistake.
It reminded me of the stress I was under when I was a deputy headteacher. I even wrote an article for the Times Educational Supplement (under the pseudonym Chris Jarrett) in which I explained my fear of corridors ... because they were places where doors would open and people would pop out and expect you to do something. It reminded me of how impossible the job was, the repeated demands of others, my inability to delegate (mostly because I didn't have anyone to delegate to) and how my personal life suffered.
But as well as being a frighteningly accurate portrait of a man under pressure, it also allegorised our dystopian world. Many of the demands were for Ryder to help people solve what was widely perceived as a crisis in the city, to aid the citizens in their attempts to bring about a cultural and consequently economic rebirth of their town. I wondered whether these were a comment on post-imperial Britain.
Alternatively, some of it seemed to be the torments of a celebrated artist, struggling with the expectations of others and an inner feeling of worthlessness, of imposter syndrome:
Is it a five hundred page nightmare? It certainly follows the tangled logic of a dream narrative. Is it an almost endless acid trip? Is it a nervous breakdown? Is this how a newly famous author must feel when the expectations of the world are so out of proportion with his assessment of his own abilities? (In chapter 22, the narrator, realising he hasn't had time to practise the piece he will perform, tells a man who wants him to plays for his dog's funeral: "I've been obliged to attend to too many requests, and as a result I'm now very hard pressed to get done the most important things.") Or is it a rewriting of Kafka's Trial?
Yes it went on and on but it was fluently written and endlessly inventive and it certainly produced a claustrophobic feeling of pressure. I had to finish it, I needed to know whether the culminating concert would be a success or not and whether the needs of so many needy people would be satisfied. It was an epic read. I've never read anything quite like it. I think it is probably a masterpiece.
Surreal and superb.
The narrator-protagonist is Mr Ryder, a celebrated pianist, who arrives in an unnamed Central European city where he is due to give a speech and perform at a forthcoming concert. But as soon as he arrives at his hotel, things begin to go wrong. Hilde Stratmann has put together a busy schedule over the next few days but she doesn't share it with him. Instead, everyone he meets makes demands upon his time. The hotel porter Gustav, whose mission is to improve the status of hotel porters, wants him to meet his fellows at a local cafe where they collectively urge him to make a statement supporting their cause. Stephan, the son of the hotel manager wants Mr R to hear him play the piano and advise him if he is good enough to perform at the concert. Sophie, who seems to be Ryder's wife, wants him to look after Boris, her son, and Boris wants him to go back to their old apartment to find a toy that was left behind in the move. A newspaper photographer wants him to pose before a controversial monument and he agrees, despite being privy to a conversation which makes it clear he is being set-up. He is expected to mend the fractured relationship between an alcoholic orchestra conductor and his ex-wife. Etcetera.
It seems he cannot say no to anyone and in his endeavours to meet these multiple demands he crisscrosses the town and its surrounding countryside, never quite sure where he is going but often reaching his goal even though the landscape must shrink and twist and buckle like an Escher version of the Mobius strip for him to get there (this reminded me hugely of chapter 2 of Alice Through the Looking Glass when the paths in the garden twist and turn and Alice is advised that if she wants to get somewhere she should head in the opposite direction). And, of course, on each of his travels he meets new characters, including several plucked straight from his childhood, who make fresh and further demands upon him.
Usually, when he meets people, they treat him with respect and show that they expect great things of him, increasing the feeling that he is subject to demands that it will prove impossible to meet. But sometimes they ignore him completely and at other times he encounters hostility. Some characters discuss him as if he wasn't there. On other occasions he is able to follow characters and listen in to their discussions, understanding their thoughts, even though they are round a corner or inside a building where he cannot possibly have followed them. It's all incredibly surreal.
Doors, as in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, are portals into new places and new areas of experience. Except, perhaps, for the door into the broom cupboard which he opens by mistake even though he is well aware of the comedy trope about people walking into a broom cupboard by mistake.
It reminded me of the stress I was under when I was a deputy headteacher. I even wrote an article for the Times Educational Supplement (under the pseudonym Chris Jarrett) in which I explained my fear of corridors ... because they were places where doors would open and people would pop out and expect you to do something. It reminded me of how impossible the job was, the repeated demands of others, my inability to delegate (mostly because I didn't have anyone to delegate to) and how my personal life suffered.
But as well as being a frighteningly accurate portrait of a man under pressure, it also allegorised our dystopian world. Many of the demands were for Ryder to help people solve what was widely perceived as a crisis in the city, to aid the citizens in their attempts to bring about a cultural and consequently economic rebirth of their town. I wondered whether these were a comment on post-imperial Britain.
Alternatively, some of it seemed to be the torments of a celebrated artist, struggling with the expectations of others and an inner feeling of worthlessness, of imposter syndrome:
Is it a five hundred page nightmare? It certainly follows the tangled logic of a dream narrative. Is it an almost endless acid trip? Is it a nervous breakdown? Is this how a newly famous author must feel when the expectations of the world are so out of proportion with his assessment of his own abilities? (In chapter 22, the narrator, realising he hasn't had time to practise the piece he will perform, tells a man who wants him to plays for his dog's funeral: "I've been obliged to attend to too many requests, and as a result I'm now very hard pressed to get done the most important things.") Or is it a rewriting of Kafka's Trial?
Yes it went on and on but it was fluently written and endlessly inventive and it certainly produced a claustrophobic feeling of pressure. I had to finish it, I needed to know whether the culminating concert would be a success or not and whether the needs of so many needy people would be satisfied. It was an epic read. I've never read anything quite like it. I think it is probably a masterpiece.
Surreal and superb.
challenging
funny
mysterious
sad
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Confusing to read. About the life of pianist Ryder and his time in a city for a performance. You have no sense of why or where, what comes next. Absorbing world but took some while to get into the style of writing. Something about being out of control, not living in the moment, and the conceit of talented people.
4.5 stars
The reading experience reminds me of Alain Resnais' film Last Year at Marienbad, timeless, hypnotic and defies logic.
The Unenclosed is an intentionally unbreakable literary puzzle; some readers might be frustrated by its narrative fickleness and the absence of an identifiable end goal, but Kazuo Ishiguro's quietly stylish writing and the 'stumbled-upon' discussions on talent, fame and human nature ensure there are plenty of relatable substance worth savoring under its sliding dreamscape.
The reading experience reminds me of Alain Resnais' film Last Year at Marienbad, timeless, hypnotic and defies logic.
The Unenclosed is an intentionally unbreakable literary puzzle; some readers might be frustrated by its narrative fickleness and the absence of an identifiable end goal, but Kazuo Ishiguro's quietly stylish writing and the 'stumbled-upon' discussions on talent, fame and human nature ensure there are plenty of relatable substance worth savoring under its sliding dreamscape.
It is one of hardest book to rate. I think if you are of sort who likes Ulysses because of all the clever tricks of narrative Joyce brings up in his work, you will like Unconsoled too because those tricks are the best selling point of Unconsoled for me. The centeral theme of not finding a closure or satisfaction is what you feel on reaching the ending of the book.
To begin with there are tricks relating to, of course, memory. IMO nomally Ishiquro uses the forgetful narrator thing rather well. In this book though, our protagonist and narrator seems to have forgotten that he had a wife and son among other things. In fact, he is sort of guy who could benifit a lot from keeping one of those google calendars to remind him everything he must do. He is forever forgetting his appointments and when he does remember them fails to keeep them for some other reason.
Narration itself has some tricks. At times narrator can't seem to remember his own past and then there are times our narrator forgets that he is not omniscient - and narrates events he had no way of knowing. Then again, at one point, he listens to two people planning to fool enough clear enough and yet acts oblivious and gets fooled by them. Another trick is when it start seeming that novel is building itself on the go. Narrator may meet a character that would seem a stranger at first but that would later turn out to have a common past wirh him. Sometimes he may not rememer it after having had whole conversations with this person.
Then there is the tricks relating to English manners. One of the reasons that the book is so long and sometimes difficult to read is these English manners which means characters take a lot of time to say something simple and then feel compelled to repeat it. They are repeatedly sorry and grateful to each other for trifals. Yet, at one point narrator attends a sort of party in his evening robe and no one seems to care .... not even when the robe comes open revealing everything.
There are also tricks relating to altering time-space continoum. For example, our narrator once started on a journey on a car only to later find that his destination was in the same hotel he had started his journey from.
The community of the town is seen behaving stangely. Too much importance is being attached to town needing to find a pianist particularly now that they can no longer pretend that the last one was medicore. Narrator's being one of best known pianists makes them act well toward him generally and yet, there are times when they act almost hostile to him. At one point these people are hypocritical enough to want to build a statue of a dog to please a man. In same meeting later, our protagonist had got attention of gathering and was about to make a speech, a woman distracts him with a personal conversation and he seems to forget about the public address .... yet everyone is praising the opening sentence he did manage to say.
Then there is whole dream-like nature of events which arise from display of all the tricks mentioned above. One example of dream like turn of events is when protagonist finds himself physically unable to speak at an important point in a meeting.
One of themes of the book is suggested by the title itself. A big part of book is confessions of failures, disappointments, hopes and guilt. The confessors are always wanting something from protagonist who manages to fail them all. In fact, in the end, all his attempts turn out to be completely useless. The inaility of these characters to come to consolation with their past has rendered themselves incapable of coming to terms with present.
LIke with 'When we were Orphans', the narrator is trying to come to terms with his past (read 'his parents' in both cases) but in trying to do so fails to come to terms with his present (In 'When We Were Orphans', he fails to elope his female friend, here he loses his wife and family). The new pianist whom narrator is to introduce to the town as the face of their culture ends up appearing drunkard at the event.
There are a lot of parallels within the book - his desire to impress his parents is mirrored in Stephen, his parent-child-no-longer-talking-with-each-other relationship with his son is mirrored in relationship between Gustav and Sophie. His failure to hold on to affections of his wife and son is mirrored in hotel manager's failure.
To begin with there are tricks relating to, of course, memory. IMO nomally Ishiquro uses the forgetful narrator thing rather well. In this book though, our protagonist and narrator seems to have forgotten that he had a wife and son among other things. In fact, he is sort of guy who could benifit a lot from keeping one of those google calendars to remind him everything he must do. He is forever forgetting his appointments and when he does remember them fails to keeep them for some other reason.
Narration itself has some tricks. At times narrator can't seem to remember his own past and then there are times our narrator forgets that he is not omniscient - and narrates events he had no way of knowing. Then again, at one point, he listens to two people planning to fool enough clear enough and yet acts oblivious and gets fooled by them. Another trick is when it start seeming that novel is building itself on the go. Narrator may meet a character that would seem a stranger at first but that would later turn out to have a common past wirh him. Sometimes he may not rememer it after having had whole conversations with this person.
Then there is the tricks relating to English manners. One of the reasons that the book is so long and sometimes difficult to read is these English manners which means characters take a lot of time to say something simple and then feel compelled to repeat it. They are repeatedly sorry and grateful to each other for trifals. Yet, at one point narrator attends a sort of party in his evening robe and no one seems to care .... not even when the robe comes open revealing everything.
There are also tricks relating to altering time-space continoum. For example, our narrator once started on a journey on a car only to later find that his destination was in the same hotel he had started his journey from.
The community of the town is seen behaving stangely. Too much importance is being attached to town needing to find a pianist particularly now that they can no longer pretend that the last one was medicore. Narrator's being one of best known pianists makes them act well toward him generally and yet, there are times when they act almost hostile to him. At one point these people are hypocritical enough to want to build a statue of a dog to please a man. In same meeting later, our protagonist had got attention of gathering and was about to make a speech, a woman distracts him with a personal conversation and he seems to forget about the public address .... yet everyone is praising the opening sentence he did manage to say.
Then there is whole dream-like nature of events which arise from display of all the tricks mentioned above. One example of dream like turn of events is when protagonist finds himself physically unable to speak at an important point in a meeting.
One of themes of the book is suggested by the title itself. A big part of book is confessions of failures, disappointments, hopes and guilt. The confessors are always wanting something from protagonist who manages to fail them all. In fact, in the end, all his attempts turn out to be completely useless. The inaility of these characters to come to consolation with their past has rendered themselves incapable of coming to terms with present.
LIke with 'When we were Orphans', the narrator is trying to come to terms with his past (read 'his parents' in both cases) but in trying to do so fails to come to terms with his present (In 'When We Were Orphans', he fails to elope his female friend, here he loses his wife and family). The new pianist whom narrator is to introduce to the town as the face of their culture ends up appearing drunkard at the event.
There are a lot of parallels within the book - his desire to impress his parents is mirrored in Stephen, his parent-child-no-longer-talking-with-each-other relationship with his son is mirrored in relationship between Gustav and Sophie. His failure to hold on to affections of his wife and son is mirrored in hotel manager's failure.
challenging
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
En utrolig underlig bok! Likte den godt, men i alle dager. Veldig frustrerende å lese når hovedpersonen ikke skjønner noen ting og er så sinnsykt ineffektiv!!!
I simply felt like I started the book too long ago that I didn’t quite remember all of its plot points. When I tried reading it again after a few months, I found the writing very dense and the events not interesting enough to keep me hooked. Those two factors combined, unfortunately, made me DNF this book.
Il est assez rare qu'un livre de 900 pages que j'ai traîné pendant deux mois me laisse sans émotion. Pourtant, le sujet m'interpelait beaucoup. Un pianiste émérite du nom de Ryder arrive dans une ville sans nom de l'Europe de l'Est où il doit donner un concert censé redorer le blason artistique de l'endroit. Malheureusement, les habitants s'accrochent sans cesse à lui pour qu'il leur rende de menus services qui l'empêchent de se consacrer à son art.
On s'aperçoit rapidement que l'histoire se situe dans un univers kafkaesque qui obéit à la logique du rêve et où les réactions des personnages sont improbables. Ryder, qui est supposé mettre les pieds dans cette ville pour la première fois, y a pourtant un fils et une femme qu'il ne semble nullement surpris de retrouver. L'architecture de la ville n'a aucune structure logique. Les habitants semblent tout à fait imperméables aux réticences de Ryder qui lui paraît incapable de refuser quoi que ce soit.
Certains passages sont amusants et le livre est admirablement bien écrit. Le problème, c'est que le personnage de Ryder intéresse peu et que son mutisme devant les dérangements interminables qu'il endure devient lassant. Sur 200 pages, le projet aurait tenu. Mais sur 900, c'est assez difficile de trouver une raison de continuer, en dehors de la beauté de l'écriture et d'une volonté de savoir si Ishiguro nous conduit vers un grand dessein qui nous échappe. Malheureusement ce n'est pas le cas, et j'ai fermé le livre sans rien ressentir.
On s'aperçoit rapidement que l'histoire se situe dans un univers kafkaesque qui obéit à la logique du rêve et où les réactions des personnages sont improbables. Ryder, qui est supposé mettre les pieds dans cette ville pour la première fois, y a pourtant un fils et une femme qu'il ne semble nullement surpris de retrouver. L'architecture de la ville n'a aucune structure logique. Les habitants semblent tout à fait imperméables aux réticences de Ryder qui lui paraît incapable de refuser quoi que ce soit.
Certains passages sont amusants et le livre est admirablement bien écrit. Le problème, c'est que le personnage de Ryder intéresse peu et que son mutisme devant les dérangements interminables qu'il endure devient lassant. Sur 200 pages, le projet aurait tenu. Mais sur 900, c'est assez difficile de trouver une raison de continuer, en dehors de la beauté de l'écriture et d'une volonté de savoir si Ishiguro nous conduit vers un grand dessein qui nous échappe. Malheureusement ce n'est pas le cas, et j'ai fermé le livre sans rien ressentir.