Ishiguro is after big things in this deceptive novel of ideas, and his ending will haunt you, but he’s also created big challenges for his narrator. The story is set in an ancient mythical Britain complete with ogres, pixies, and dragons, where people are beset by a fog that steals their memories. Since the telling is deliberately surreal and dreamlike, David Horovitch can’t do much to create clarity or momentum as elderly Axl and Beatrice trudge off on a quest to find their son, whom they remember very partially. Beatrice is the only major female character, and Horovitch could have done more to distinguish the males—Axl, Wiston, Gawain, the evil monks, the devious boatmen—from each other. It’s a puzzling, frustrating unforgettable listen. B.G. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
“And when you are lucky enough as a writer to have your book be found, and then have it be a source of someone’s passion, someone who is not normally spoken to by the book publishing industry, who then with generosity and real passion, finds a way to tell other people about it, you cannot […]
In this month’s excellent crop of new novels, Kazuo Ishiguro returns with a fable-like story, a poet makes her much-discussed debut with a modern retelling of Madame Bovary, and Coco Chanel stars in a novel inspired by the fashion queen’s life.
If, while strolling through a bookstore or clicking around on the web, you’ve recently laid eyes on the cover for Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, you’d be forgiven for not realizing it is, in its own quiet way, one of the most controversial novels published this year, and possibly this decade.
Some readers grow up relishing stories about fantastical creatures, and then set such books aside for more realistic reads when they’re adults. But we all could use a unicorn or two in our lives, which is why it’s so delightful when a writer known for realism sneaks a mythical creature into literary fiction—or builds a […]
Historical fiction is the peanut butter/chocolate of literature—two great tastes that taste great together. Most historical fiction is played pretty straight, using real events and an accurate depiction of a time period as the background for the more fanciful inventions of the story. The five writers listed here? Not so much. These books take an […]