Halle-frikin'-lujah

Date started: September 6, 2023
Date finished: January 31, 2024

The story is set in England after the death of King Arthur, where Britons and Saxons live in relative peace. It follows an old Briton couple setting out to visit their son, all the while fighting something they call the "mist" - a curious ailment that prevents anyone on the island from having long term memories, though the memory loss seems selective. On the way they meet lots of people who help them understand the mist and its origins, they start remembering scenes from their life together, and slowly the reader gets a picture of what happened after Arthur died.

I must be honest, I didn't really enjoy reading this book. While the setting was interesting, the pace was slow and I couldn't really get into the story for more than a few pages at a time. I powered through the last few chapters simply because I was tired of feeling guilt for starting any new book while this one sits on the shelf unfinished. My rating is purely for my enjoyment of the book, it has nothing to do with the quality of the work. ( )

I was wondering what I'd get when I noticed what appeared to be fantasy from [a:Kazuo Ishiguro|4280|Kazuo Ishiguro|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1424906625p2/4280.jpg] on the library shelf. [b:The Buried Giant|22522805|The Buried Giant|Kazuo Ishiguro|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1451444392s/22522805.jpg|41115424] proves to be remarkably Kazuo. In this fictional Albion with ongoing Anglo-Saxon conflict, he threads an underlying question of what it means to be British, that to me feels like the kind of interrogation you can only really have when you grow up a non-native Brit. It's startling, at least to me, to see the landscapes of England shifted to fantasy and yet described so accurately (or what I imagine to be accurately). He gets the spirit of the place.

Setting aside, the novel is an odd, timeskipping piece. We're kept in the dark about most of the plot, since the characters don't really know what's going on half the time anyway. It's interesting to meet characters who don't remember their own lives, but I wouldn't say the experience is particularly fun. The jumps in perspective and time, even mid paragraph, are disorienting. Again, that's sort of the point, I suppose, but it's not easy to read. Ishiguro gets an amazing sense of tone and atmosphere here; it's certainly "literary" or at least feels that way. Yet impressive prose doesn't make it entirely enjoyable, so come into this with appropriate expectations... ( )

I'm still trying to figure out what I think about this. I've read all the major reviews, including the negative one in the New Yorker. I think the one I liked best was Neil Gaiman's. He said he couldn't love this but he appreciated it. The book is pretty bleak and it's hard to love a book that's seems to exist to remind you of bummers such as:

1. The only way to erase vengeance would be to erase memory.
2. Honor is all well and good, but only takes you so far.
3. We all die alone.

But in the end I suppose I choose to focus on the love story inside the bigger story about war and peace. The love story is enough to make me love the book. Axl calling Beatrice "princess" soothed me (I listened to a bit of the audiobook and the narrator said it so tenderly). The way they took care of each other, the way they spoke to each other, the last crushing scene. It all worked powerfully on my emotions. "Are you there, Axl?" "Still here, princess." Sigh. ( )

Forever struck by the deep, historied sense of love between Axl and Beatrice ( )

My first Ishiguro book and I am mesmerized by his style. I read the story in a haze and I thought it was due to the late hours I was reading it at. Having just finished the book, I now understand it was Ishiguro’s masterful writing that put me exactly in that position. This story, with many layers of human emotion, will impact each reader differently. I am aware of the beautifully written tale of an old and fragile couple in love and at the end of their journey. It will take me a little longer to figure out the rest.