The Buried Giant (Audible Audio Edition) Kazuo Ishiguro David Horovitch Faber Faber Books
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The Romans have long since departed, and Britain is steadily declining into ruin. But at last the wars that once ravaged the country have ceased.
The Buried Giant begins as a couple, Axl and Beatrice, set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen for years. They expect to face many hazards - some strange and otherworldly - but they cannot yet foresee how their journey will reveal to them dark and forgotten corners of their love for one another.
Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel in a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge and and war.
The Buried Giant (Audible Audio Edition) Kazuo Ishiguro David Horovitch Faber Faber Books
Brief summary and review, no spoilers.This novel takes place in England and the time period is right after the reign of the legendary King Arthur - which is all somewhat deliberately vague. The storyline centers around the travels of 5 main characters.
The first two characters we meet - and indeed in many ways the central two characters - are an elderly couple who leave their village in search of their son. Their memories are fading and they are not sure where their son is or even what he looks like anymore. Their reason for leaving their village are hazy as well; ostensibly something to do with their being denied a candle by other villagers.
The other characters are a young boy, a brave warrior and a valiant old knight.
So much of the storyline is dreamlike and vague and I believe your ultimate enjoyment and satisfaction of this novel is based on the premise that the less you know the better, so I will only say a bit more without causing any spoilers.
We know that the characters all unite at some point. We know that they are all on different missions. Their goals are seemingly unclear but will become clear at the end.
I loved this book. At the same time I have to say that it was not a quick read for me and there were points up until midway when I thought about giving up on it. Part of this was that I am not usually a fan of books that are somewhat "dreamlike" or surreal and I usually like my stories more straight-forward and grounded. There are lots of points in this book where you feel your own memory is fading; indeed what it might be like to have dementia. That Ishiguro pulls this off so effectively is impressive but daunting for the reader.
So for me, this book took a bit of work, but I was so glad by the time I finished that I had read it. The prose, as with any of the other book by this author, is just gorgeous. You really don't want to skip one word and you really shouldn't.
I do promise you that it all comes together beautifully by the end, and it was quite an emotional read for me. The storyline is so heartfelt and very mythic in feel and Ishiguro has some poignant and powerful things to say about love and vengeance, morals and ethics and about memory and reflection. Just amazing.
Highly recommended.
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The Buried Giant (Audible Audio Edition) Kazuo Ishiguro David Horovitch Faber Faber Books Reviews
Is it better to remember—or to forget? Is memory a treasure that gives our lives meaning and shapes our identities--or a curse that keeps us from feeling love and acceptance in the present?
The Buried Giant is an ideal example of what rich, meaningful, challenging literary fantasy can do.
It's reminiscent of Ishiguro's own work (Never Let Me Go similarly exemplifies the potential of literary science fiction) but also of the philosophical, allegorical, character-driven fantasy of Mervyn Peake, Gene Wolfe, Ursula Le Guin, and Margo Lanagan (whose amazing Tender Morsels is also a must-read), among others. Imagine Wolfe's Wizard Knight series with its Arthurian setting and unpredictability but with elderly protagonists, a smaller cast, and a focus on memory (and how it can provide meaning and also create pain--for individuals and nations) and you'll have a good picture of what to expect from The Buried Giant.
Literal events are comprehensible with some effort (despite shifting points of view and breaks in chronology as characters start stories and only later explain the events leading up to them), but the novel leaves open profound questions about love, war, violence, and memory. It's also consistently beautiful and engaging at the sentence level--unlike in much generic fantasy (which sometimes presents elaborate worlds and plots but falls flat in emotion, dialogue, and characterization), characters each speak and act in completely distinct ways, and there is wit and meaningful, often moving emotions in the smallest incidents. The novel is more about its characters and themes than its plot, and it isn't dependent on lots of things happening, but by the end, the lives of the characters, and the shape of their world, are indeed fundamentally changed.
Unfortunately, books like this often disappoint the two groups of readers who give them a chance readers of realistic literary fiction, who are turned off that it's fantasy, which they foolishly see as subliterary (even though most of the history of literature before the development of realism actually consists of what we'd now consider fantasy, and the kind of primarily commercial fantasy thought to define the genre is merely an invention of the last few decades), and readers of generic/commercial fantasy, whose conventional expectations (a standard quest, action, completely clear storytelling, an enormous amount of world-building, etc.) will be frustrated by the novel's literary style and focus on character and theme.
But for those who can appreciate literary fantasy (my own favorite form of literature), it will be magical--the kind of book to read and reread and give to others in the hopes they will feel the same.
I have never read anything quite like this ever before..The Buried Giant is part fable, part road-story, part exploration of character when the point of the journey and the backstory becomes clear, it was as if a light came on. I can think of some people who'd find this writing infuriating the whole way in which it's handled makes it hard to work out whether what's being described is the world as it is or the world as it's being seen by the characters. Once I'd decided simply to allow the author's approach to work itself out, I loved it but, as I say, it's a really strange book, a really strange way of writing. And please note my star rating once I'd finished it, I thought it brilliant!
( I went on to read some of the author's other works they're quite different, both from this and really, from each other but just as skilfully written! I now have a new author to follow)
Brief summary and review, no spoilers.
This novel takes place in England and the time period is right after the reign of the legendary King Arthur - which is all somewhat deliberately vague. The storyline centers around the travels of 5 main characters.
The first two characters we meet - and indeed in many ways the central two characters - are an elderly couple who leave their village in search of their son. Their memories are fading and they are not sure where their son is or even what he looks like anymore. Their reason for leaving their village are hazy as well; ostensibly something to do with their being denied a candle by other villagers.
The other characters are a young boy, a brave warrior and a valiant old knight.
So much of the storyline is dreamlike and vague and I believe your ultimate enjoyment and satisfaction of this novel is based on the premise that the less you know the better, so I will only say a bit more without causing any spoilers.
We know that the characters all unite at some point. We know that they are all on different missions. Their goals are seemingly unclear but will become clear at the end.
I loved this book. At the same time I have to say that it was not a quick read for me and there were points up until midway when I thought about giving up on it. Part of this was that I am not usually a fan of books that are somewhat "dreamlike" or surreal and I usually like my stories more straight-forward and grounded. There are lots of points in this book where you feel your own memory is fading; indeed what it might be like to have dementia. That Ishiguro pulls this off so effectively is impressive but daunting for the reader.
So for me, this book took a bit of work, but I was so glad by the time I finished that I had read it. The prose, as with any of the other book by this author, is just gorgeous. You really don't want to skip one word and you really shouldn't.
I do promise you that it all comes together beautifully by the end, and it was quite an emotional read for me. The storyline is so heartfelt and very mythic in feel and Ishiguro has some poignant and powerful things to say about love and vengeance, morals and ethics and about memory and reflection. Just amazing.
Highly recommended.
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