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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
It took me quite some time to finish because I grew so impatient and frustrated with the people the protagonist encountered, I would put down the book several times. I particularly disliked the hotel manager and Sophie. However, apart from that, I think it’s a brilliant book. The style was different and I think very difficult to write, so cheers to Ishiguro for this piece.
challenging
funny
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I don’t know how to distill my thoughts on this book into something less than an essay on anxiety and seeing our own stories mirrored back to us from other people’s interactions in our lives. So I’ll say it’s Ishiguro does Kafka and assume that such a description is enough to let someone know if they want to read this XD
I did not enjoy reading this book, but I don't feel like I am qualified to give it a proper review. I never was sure of what was going on and I hoped I would have a better idea when I got to the end, but nothing really gelled for me. The problem I had with this book is its surreal aspect. I am sure the whole story is some sort of allegory or metaphor, but basically I am not interested in figuring it out. That is what I mean by saying I don't feel qualified. Maybe I will revisit this book, maybe I will just let it be.
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I believe that this book is a great representation of the whimsy and magic that results from dreaming. The entire storyline read as if the character, Mr. Ryder, was navigating through an unknown world that he had created in his sleep. If you're someone that can appreciate the mundane intricacies of life, then you will enjoy this book. But if you're someone that prefers a big story with a punchy storyline and a definite conclusion, then you may want to forego reading this. However, I enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to picking up another Ishiguro sometime soon.
challenging
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This was more complex and nebulous than the other Ishiguro works I've read, perhaps reflecting the shift in its subject-matter and medium from unreliable narratorial perspective and meditation on memory toward a more brutal postmodern dreamscape that ultimately does nothing but to confuse, mystify and irritate the protagonist - and the reader, as well. The title may well refer to the unconsoled people of the town wherein the events of the novel unfold, yet by its conclusion, it would be hard to argue that many readers will probably be left feeling unconsoled as well.
Some of the more common epithets that have been applied to it include Kafkaesque, perplexing and peculiar - and I would not disagree. It is hard to even do the usual "this book essentially revolves around ..." because - what does the book revolve around? In essence, we follow the journey of a famed pianist, Ryder, whose scheduled performance at an unnamed European (German, seemingly) town to restore civic morale and engagement is repeatedly, intermittently disrupted by a series of strange, surreal encounters with seeming strangers who alternate between utter obsequiousness (praising at length his ability and his mission, for instance) and yet daring to disrupt his activities with apparently banal, personal activities - for example, in the very first few pages, the hotel butler mysteriously asks him to speak to his own daughter.
Over the course of the narrative, Ishiguro's trademark unreliable narratorial style dissolves and mutates into an utterly befuddling series of events that playfully dissolves traditional fictional boundaries and threatens any understanding readers imagine they might have reached about the novel. Ryder is able to read into the deepest internal thoughts of the various characters he encounters, and we begin to learn that these seeming strangers are in fact familiar - 'Sophie', for instance, appears to represent a past or present partner. (Or are they? The book is also littered with improbable happenings - for instance, when Ryder walks a mile from the hotel and enters a door into his room, or when he sits with two journalists who speak of him in utterly disparaging tones seemingly unaware that he is there - that underscore the blurriness or even total dissolution of the line dividing reality from dreamscape. More on this later.)
The city itself appears to be a comment on the worthlessness of artistic values - a deliberate attack on the fatuous link between art (especially of a detached art that refuses to engage with social concerns) and politics, with the hyperbolic exaggeration of Ryder's integrality in dispelling the malaise of the city serving ironically to underline to us how preposterous such an objective sounds. One can also read this as a (recurrent) comment by Ishiguro on the conflation of duty and humanity - much as Stevens in The Remains of the Day does not witness the dying moments of his father for fear of disrupting his duties, so too Ryder actually leaves two mortally wounded (though as it turns out one of them mysteriously recovers perfectly fine - another speck of confusion amidst the sea of hallucination) individuals in single-minded pursuit of his all-important performance.
In another parallel to the Remains of the Day, Ryder's personal (love) life is also made subordinate and even destroyed by his professional life. As Stevens and Miss Kenton ultimately only mentally grasp at the notion of what could have been, Ryder and Sophie here actually appear to have a relationship, yet Ryder's irritability and fixation on his professional duties conspire to repeatedly anger and irritate (an admittedly unreasonably irascible) Sophie, to the point where she memorably tells him to "leave us, you were always on the outside of our love".
What makes this perhaps a more complex work than Ishiguro's preceding novels, which center mostly on the conceits of memory and duty, is the evolution of the narrative perspective. As mentioned, Ryder repeatedly demonstrates the ability to elucidate others' thoughts, feelings and concerns merely by looking at them, often thus predicting what they will say with an expectant air. This combines with the very odd farcical air that pervades the narrative - for example, when Ryder chances upon a funeral, the mourners all break into manic adulation, then vituperative anger; when he enters a cinema, people roll their entire bodies on their backs to let people pass - to create a sense of utter unreality, as though any notion of restraint or control is null. A nod to postmodern playfulness? Or a lament of excessive decorum? Regardless, combining the often starkly inappropriate behaviour of various characters in various settings and Ryder's almost clairvoyant sense of perception gives rise to an eerie sense that the entire novel, ultimately, is a dream.
Each character who seems related to Ryder - Sophie, his purported partner; Boris, a step-son-like figure; Stephan, a talented young pianist who seeks to give the performance of his life to reconcile his parents; Brodsky, an obvious musical talent whose life has been wasted away; and Christoff, the manifestation of mediocrity idolised by those with little discernment - can alternatively be read as a facet of Ryder's personality, anxieties and memories. Boris, so repeatedly neglected by Ryder, seems an embodiment of the lost child that, in the few flashbacks we get of him, Ryder evidently appears; Sophie symbolises a personal life, a comfortable family and romantic partner whom Ryder forsakes in his mindless quest; Brodsky perhaps suggests the pointlessness of sacrificing a personal life for a professional one, for his former partner thrives in the city while he himself becomes a joke; and Christoff perhaps symbolises his lingering insecurities about his talent despite being apparently acclaimed as among the best in the world. Most eerie, however, is Stephan's utter inability to command respect from his father and singular fixation on playing the piano satisfactorily in the deluded belief that this will somehow break the spell of silence that has fallen over his parents' marriage; in particular, his mother.
Much as how Stephan, despite demonstrating an astonishing level of technical facility, is unable to achieve this, so too Ryder's parents - upon whom the performance seems to depend - do not turn up, and indeed Ryder does not ever give his recital, for the crowd leaves before it is possible. It seems as if the entire thing is a representation of Ryder's dreams - the innumerable instances where Ryder appears to do nothing or do things badly, only for others to later report that they were an assured success, for instance, or the apparent delusion of Ryder (as Sophie angrily relates) that every performance is the critical one, where his parents will attend and everything will be resolved becomes a farce, yet a heart-rendingly tragic one. In Ishiguro's meandering prose, we do not see it immediately, but so intertwined do we become with the confusion and pointlessness of the narrative that the narrative and Ryder become one; the endlessly exhausting cyclical repetition of the novel becomes a formalistic representation of the futility of his own quest.
Yet as successful as the depiction of this dreamscape is, it sometimes felt a little excessive. It may certainly be radical in conception, and very successful in executing that radical vision through its unorthodox style, but it was simply too exasperating to read. The repetition at one point was no longer of artistic merit; it seemed that in the innumerable hanging narrative threads one sensed not so much nuance, development or growth as repetition and banal parallelisms. The astonishing length of some of the monologues - utterly pointless speeches like Gustav's initial description of the life of the porters in the city to Ryder - was amusing and artistically deliberate at first, but repeating this 'trick' so many times made these outbursts a bore - I simply felt like skimming over these ruminations. While I normally take issue with open endings, I didn't here because that was part of the point of the novel - instead of the wistfulness and what-could-have-been that pervades previous Ishiguro novels, here the concern has shifted to a much more ambitious (and successful!) exploration of self-deceit, self-delusion, vulnerability and human tragedy. It seems some reviewers have noted the possibility that the Unconsoled also functions as a meditation on the stresses and hectic chaos of modern life, though the deliberate detachment of the Unconsoled from any recognisable social, cultural or historical context - unlike, for example, The Remains of the Day and A Pale View of Hills, which deal with Appeasement in World War II and post-War Japanese life and identity respectively - makes this less argument less convincing for me. Indeed, without appearing to stray too much into the fallacy of a timeless, universal relatability, I did feel that Ishiguro succeeds simply in capturing the struggles of human identity that Ryder so chaotically, phantasmagorically, viscerally undergoes at length in the novel. The magic of Ishiguro's writing - so notable for its tautness, its nuance and the innumerable suggestions of lurking humanity and tragedy in its corners - somehow remains despite the sheer heftiness of the prose here. One to read, I think, if a devoted fan of Ishiguro, but certainly a text whose infamous ability to polarise readers is one I can comprehend.
Some of the more common epithets that have been applied to it include Kafkaesque, perplexing and peculiar - and I would not disagree. It is hard to even do the usual "this book essentially revolves around ..." because - what does the book revolve around? In essence, we follow the journey of a famed pianist, Ryder, whose scheduled performance at an unnamed European (German, seemingly) town to restore civic morale and engagement is repeatedly, intermittently disrupted by a series of strange, surreal encounters with seeming strangers who alternate between utter obsequiousness (praising at length his ability and his mission, for instance) and yet daring to disrupt his activities with apparently banal, personal activities - for example, in the very first few pages, the hotel butler mysteriously asks him to speak to his own daughter.
Over the course of the narrative, Ishiguro's trademark unreliable narratorial style dissolves and mutates into an utterly befuddling series of events that playfully dissolves traditional fictional boundaries and threatens any understanding readers imagine they might have reached about the novel. Ryder is able to read into the deepest internal thoughts of the various characters he encounters, and we begin to learn that these seeming strangers are in fact familiar - 'Sophie', for instance, appears to represent a past or present partner. (Or are they? The book is also littered with improbable happenings - for instance, when Ryder walks a mile from the hotel and enters a door into his room, or when he sits with two journalists who speak of him in utterly disparaging tones seemingly unaware that he is there - that underscore the blurriness or even total dissolution of the line dividing reality from dreamscape. More on this later.)
The city itself appears to be a comment on the worthlessness of artistic values - a deliberate attack on the fatuous link between art (especially of a detached art that refuses to engage with social concerns) and politics, with the hyperbolic exaggeration of Ryder's integrality in dispelling the malaise of the city serving ironically to underline to us how preposterous such an objective sounds. One can also read this as a (recurrent) comment by Ishiguro on the conflation of duty and humanity - much as Stevens in The Remains of the Day does not witness the dying moments of his father for fear of disrupting his duties, so too Ryder actually leaves two mortally wounded (though as it turns out one of them mysteriously recovers perfectly fine - another speck of confusion amidst the sea of hallucination) individuals in single-minded pursuit of his all-important performance.
In another parallel to the Remains of the Day, Ryder's personal (love) life is also made subordinate and even destroyed by his professional life. As Stevens and Miss Kenton ultimately only mentally grasp at the notion of what could have been, Ryder and Sophie here actually appear to have a relationship, yet Ryder's irritability and fixation on his professional duties conspire to repeatedly anger and irritate (an admittedly unreasonably irascible) Sophie, to the point where she memorably tells him to "leave us, you were always on the outside of our love".
What makes this perhaps a more complex work than Ishiguro's preceding novels, which center mostly on the conceits of memory and duty, is the evolution of the narrative perspective. As mentioned, Ryder repeatedly demonstrates the ability to elucidate others' thoughts, feelings and concerns merely by looking at them, often thus predicting what they will say with an expectant air. This combines with the very odd farcical air that pervades the narrative - for example, when Ryder chances upon a funeral, the mourners all break into manic adulation, then vituperative anger; when he enters a cinema, people roll their entire bodies on their backs to let people pass - to create a sense of utter unreality, as though any notion of restraint or control is null. A nod to postmodern playfulness? Or a lament of excessive decorum? Regardless, combining the often starkly inappropriate behaviour of various characters in various settings and Ryder's almost clairvoyant sense of perception gives rise to an eerie sense that the entire novel, ultimately, is a dream.
Each character who seems related to Ryder - Sophie, his purported partner; Boris, a step-son-like figure; Stephan, a talented young pianist who seeks to give the performance of his life to reconcile his parents; Brodsky, an obvious musical talent whose life has been wasted away; and Christoff, the manifestation of mediocrity idolised by those with little discernment - can alternatively be read as a facet of Ryder's personality, anxieties and memories. Boris, so repeatedly neglected by Ryder, seems an embodiment of the lost child that, in the few flashbacks we get of him, Ryder evidently appears; Sophie symbolises a personal life, a comfortable family and romantic partner whom Ryder forsakes in his mindless quest; Brodsky perhaps suggests the pointlessness of sacrificing a personal life for a professional one, for his former partner thrives in the city while he himself becomes a joke; and Christoff perhaps symbolises his lingering insecurities about his talent despite being apparently acclaimed as among the best in the world. Most eerie, however, is Stephan's utter inability to command respect from his father and singular fixation on playing the piano satisfactorily in the deluded belief that this will somehow break the spell of silence that has fallen over his parents' marriage; in particular, his mother.
Much as how Stephan, despite demonstrating an astonishing level of technical facility, is unable to achieve this, so too Ryder's parents - upon whom the performance seems to depend - do not turn up, and indeed Ryder does not ever give his recital, for the crowd leaves before it is possible. It seems as if the entire thing is a representation of Ryder's dreams - the innumerable instances where Ryder appears to do nothing or do things badly, only for others to later report that they were an assured success, for instance, or the apparent delusion of Ryder (as Sophie angrily relates) that every performance is the critical one, where his parents will attend and everything will be resolved becomes a farce, yet a heart-rendingly tragic one. In Ishiguro's meandering prose, we do not see it immediately, but so intertwined do we become with the confusion and pointlessness of the narrative that the narrative and Ryder become one; the endlessly exhausting cyclical repetition of the novel becomes a formalistic representation of the futility of his own quest.
Yet as successful as the depiction of this dreamscape is, it sometimes felt a little excessive. It may certainly be radical in conception, and very successful in executing that radical vision through its unorthodox style, but it was simply too exasperating to read. The repetition at one point was no longer of artistic merit; it seemed that in the innumerable hanging narrative threads one sensed not so much nuance, development or growth as repetition and banal parallelisms. The astonishing length of some of the monologues - utterly pointless speeches like Gustav's initial description of the life of the porters in the city to Ryder - was amusing and artistically deliberate at first, but repeating this 'trick' so many times made these outbursts a bore - I simply felt like skimming over these ruminations. While I normally take issue with open endings, I didn't here because that was part of the point of the novel - instead of the wistfulness and what-could-have-been that pervades previous Ishiguro novels, here the concern has shifted to a much more ambitious (and successful!) exploration of self-deceit, self-delusion, vulnerability and human tragedy. It seems some reviewers have noted the possibility that the Unconsoled also functions as a meditation on the stresses and hectic chaos of modern life, though the deliberate detachment of the Unconsoled from any recognisable social, cultural or historical context - unlike, for example, The Remains of the Day and A Pale View of Hills, which deal with Appeasement in World War II and post-War Japanese life and identity respectively - makes this less argument less convincing for me. Indeed, without appearing to stray too much into the fallacy of a timeless, universal relatability, I did feel that Ishiguro succeeds simply in capturing the struggles of human identity that Ryder so chaotically, phantasmagorically, viscerally undergoes at length in the novel. The magic of Ishiguro's writing - so notable for its tautness, its nuance and the innumerable suggestions of lurking humanity and tragedy in its corners - somehow remains despite the sheer heftiness of the prose here. One to read, I think, if a devoted fan of Ishiguro, but certainly a text whose infamous ability to polarise readers is one I can comprehend.
challenging
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes