Recently I’ve read less novels and more historical books. This year it needs to change. That’s why I decided to start the 30 Book Challenge. Within 6 months I will read 30 books and for each I will draw a small illustration. I’ve started with two books written by Kazuo Ishiguro: “Never Let Me Go” and “The Remains of the Day”.

I want to share here my thoughts on his books, Ishiguro writing style and his writing process.

Who is Kazuo Ishiguro and why should you care?

He was awarded a Nobel Price in Literature in 2017 and as such he joined the pristine group of writers you should know something about.
He was born in Japan and moved with his parents to Great Britain when he was six. He is still considered by Japan a Japanese writer, despite by his own admission he “couldn’t speak Japanese very well” and “felt British” spending his whole life in the UK. When he was young, he wanted to be a singer and a songwriter. That way he worked on his elliptic style visible in his writing style. For him “that was all very good preparation for the kind of fiction I went on to write. You have to leave a lot of meaning underneath the surface.”

His writing style

When you read a book, you don’t have a direct contact with the writer. He can only influence you by the words he chosen to be left on pages. Each writer does it differently. Kazuo Ishiguro concentrates on characters and through their thoughts and reactions to outside world and through their relationships with others, he creates stories to move readers emotionally. Despite he stated otherwise, I think that his style is a fusion between minimalistic Japanese (he was influenced by it enough in his first years of life), mastered classic English and years of writing. He holds his ideas within him, sometimes for years, so they can mature, then read about the topic extensively and writes notes, or fragments and then compile it into one cohesive work. Sometimes he uses so called “Crash”: he shuts himself up in a room to write for around 10 hours a day, 6 days a week without mail, guests or internet and immerses himself in story world so far to make it his reality.
Thoughts of his main characters jump from current time to past incidents fluently, keeping readers interested in woven stories. He is almost as slick as Proust doing it. It would be hard to put his books in one genre, he mixes
sci-fi, history and drama.
All of his stories have a similar arc, not repetitive, but you can feel it in atmosphere of the books. The main character usually needs to confront his past, his decisions, his self delusions or world delusions he was wrapped in through his whole life and accept the consequences.

The Remains of the Day (1989)

It is his third novel written using Crash method within 4 weeks.
It is set in post-war England, and tells the story of an elderly butler confronting his memories of a long life service. I really like the period between Victorian England and post war England. The little bits, that creates the background for the main character – how those big mansion functioned in the past – I enjoyed greatly. The character is stubborn and proud and has problems with adjusting to changing times. He tried so much to explain logically each decision he had made. More he regretted them, more he tried to explain and distance himself from them.
I loved it from beginning to the end. The best are fragments when almost three things happened at once and it is described so clearly, that I had no problem following the action and in the same time feel the urgency of situation.

The novel was made into film starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson – you can watch it on Netflix.

Never Let Me Go (2005)

This is a sci-fi novel. Kazuo Ishiguro was thinking about this idea for a few years – to write about kids/young adults. He tried to find a good reason, how to put them in a dramatic situation. And he found one.
We follow three main characters and their interaction from their infancy up to their adulthood living in a type of a boarding school. From the beginning there is something really bad hanging over those kids. There is something wrong, but it is hard to pin it down.
The way how children act is very plausible, but as I don’t really like kids, I was a little bit bored. And the big reveal, oh the big reveal…. I really don’t like it. I don’t like it, because there is no way it would work. Not medically ( too much risk for all involved parties), not economically (it would be to expensive). And I really hate, when a sci fi novel tries to sell me an idea, that wouldn’t work. But I know at least one person, who thinks it is plausible, so for each their own I suppose.

SPOILERS:

In the future, after a big war there is a big industry of cloning people. People are cloned and then the industry takes care of those clone kids for 20 years so they can grow up and then make them to be organ donors and give up their organs in multiple operations. It is just hard for me to believe someone would be spending so much money to keep those kids alive for 20 years in somewhat good health (the book insinuates that they are not keep in good conditions – only main characters were lucky to get the best treatment – and it will only get worse, but the reason why a donor in our world needs to be a healthy human is to get a good quality organ and not add any additional diseases for recipient). We can grow ears on mouse, you can get a transplant from a pig (yep, check from where come hearth valves) and we are starting to grow separate organs in lab. All of those method would be less expensive. I would believe clone theory if the clones were growing rapidly so it would take less time (a year 2 or 5) for the organs to develop inside their bodies. Or, it would be only for super rich people who keep them to get spare parts if shit happens (check the film “The Island” (2005)). Also the clones are suppose to be hated by people or cloned from lowlifes, but people just talk about it, we are not shown those situations.

:SPOILERS END

Despite my problems with the “big reveal”, I still liked the core of the story – how mine characters faced the situation.

Read or not?

Definitely check out at least one of Kazuo Ishiguro novels. It is worth it. If you are interested in post WWII Japan and how Japanese think go for
A Pale View of Hills (1982) or An Artist of the Floating World (1986). If you like post WWII England, try out The Remains of the Day (1989). If you dare to go through an adventure similar to Proust, check out The Unconsoled (1995) – supposedly his best book. If you are more interested in old school detective stories, there is When We Were Orphans (2000). You are a sci-fi fan? Never Let Me Go (2005) or The Buried Giant (2015) is for you – there are some controversies in relation to that book, check out the link below and interview with Neil Gaiman. Beware, it is long.

Illustrations 1/30 and 2/30

I’m just a beginner, bear with me.

Bibliography:

NEIL GAIMAN/KAZUO ISHIGURO INTERVIEW:
https://www.newstatesman.com/2015/05/neil-gaiman-kazuo-ishiguro-interview-literature-genre-machines-can-toil-they-can-t-imagine

OTHER ARTICLES WORTH READING:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/06/kazuo-ishiguro-the-remains-of-the-day-guardian-book-club
https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/kazuo-ishiguro
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/08/my-friend-kazuo-ishiguro-artist-without-ego-nobel-prize-robert-mccrum
https://lithub.com/how-kazuo-ishiguro-used-dream-techniques-to-write-his-most-polarizing-novel/
https://lithub.com/kazuo-ishiguro-write-what-you-know-is-the-stupidest-thing-ive-ever-heard/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/books/nobel-prize-literature.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/06/kazuo-ishiguro-the-remains-of-the-day-guardian-book-club
https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/kazuo-ishiguro
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/08/my-friend-kazuo-ishiguro-artist-without-ego-nobel-prize-robert-mccrum
https://lithub.com/how-kazuo-ishiguro-used-dream-techniques-to-write-his-most-polarizing-novel/
https://lithub.com/kazuo-ishiguro-write-what-you-know-is-the-stupidest-thing-ive-ever-heard/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/books/nobel-prize-literature.htm