Axl and Beatrice, are an adorable elderly couple and our protagonists. The inhabitants of the land have been struck by an odd amnesia, and are unable to remember such things as a fellow villager’s existence, or a child being kidnapped. The book is set in the time after the death of King Arthur, and the aftermath of a bloody war between the Saxons and the Britons. Despite the awkward dialogue, wan setting, and artificial style, this is an exceptionally well-crafted, hard-hitting book. I could not put The Buried Giant down without great effort, and the morning after I started it, when I awoke three hours early from insomnia, I chose to spend the gift of the extra time on finishing the book. While I started out critical, and intend to continue being critical, let me first say that Ishiguro wrote a good book. This is the kind of bleak thing I like to meditate on all the time, and it’s not like I don’t believe this is true–I do. But on the other hand, the quest for justice always sours into a thirst for vengeance that triggers an unending cycle of violence. In The Buried Giant, the Big Theme is that humanity is caught in a terrible bind–the only way to move beyond the crimes of the past is forgetfulness, and the more vile the crime, the more forgetfulness is necessary–and yet, forgetfulness means that justice can never be done. From what I gather, the minimal worldbuilding is because the way Ishiguro prefers to write novels is that he starts with a big literary theme, and then he finds the set-pieces that will best help him deliver said theme. As with Never Let Me Go, his so-called science fiction novel, the worldbuilding is practically nonexistent. Not because it’s a fantasy, my favorite genre–Ishiguro uses the fantastical elements lightly, as if he were painting a watercolor with the palest shades possible. And now, having read his most recent book The Buried Giant, I rather wonder if his Nobel Prize rests solely on the merits of The Remains of the Day. I should like The Buried Giant more than I do, but I don’t.
Like many others, I was blown away by Kazuo Ishiguro’s masterpiece The Remains of the Day.
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