Book Review: The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

My 2017 Goodreads Reading Challenge has been met! I read 105 of 95 books pledged, the last being
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro.

My comments:

Surprising yet familiar, The Buried Giant recalls old Arthurian tales and fables, Tolkien, and Dante.   I am still considering possible meanings to all the elements of the story of a journey into the past and into the future.  There are themes of the elusiveness of memory, forgetfulness and remembering, romance, and history. And the theme of secrets buried or forgotten in the mists and slowly revealed. The protagonist, Beatrice, and her husband Axl, set out on a journey into the unknown, barely remembering where their son lives and hoping they will find his village. They are joined on their trip by a Saxon warrior on a dragon-slaying quest, a young boy they help to protect, an elderly knight reminiscent of Don Quijote, and finally the boatman who will row them to an island, the end of their journey. I loved this unusual book with so many literary and classical reminders. The elderly couple Beatrice and Axl and their devotion to each other is particularly poignant, in spite of human weaknesses, past mistakes, and a shadowy future. My rating: 5/5.

Re-read Your Favorite Books: The Flashback Challenge

The Flashback Challenge to re-read three or more of your favorite books will run from January 1, 2010 - December 31, 2010. There are three levels of participation: Bookworm - Up to three books
Scholar - Four to six books  Literati - Over six books. Started by Aatri of Book Lust, sign up at Flashback Challenge.I found the challenge at mel u's blog, Rereading Lives.


This gives me an incentive to re-read a book I have wanted to look at again, When We Were Orphans: A Novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. Set in England and Shanghai during the 1930s, it's about a young English detective with a faulty memory who returns to wartime Shanghai in 1937 to find his parents who had disappeared there years ago when he was about nine years old. As he is an unreliable narrator, readers have to figure out the puzzle of his past and become detectives themselves to decide what is fact and what is fiction. Christopher meets a Japanese soldier in Shanghai who may or may not be his playmate from years ago. How Christopher reacts or doesn't react to him and to Shanghai during the Japanese occupation is part of his strange, delusional persona. This book intrigued me so much, I want to try again to get the hard facts about Christopher's past, which may not be possible, given his confused and inaccurate memory.

Ishiguro, born in Nagasaki, Japan and now living in London, is also author of The Remains of the Day, a Booker Prize-winning novel made into the award winning film with Anthony Hopkins.

Update: My number two book for this challenge will be Out by Natsuo Kirino, 2003. My memory of the book was jogged by the excellent review posted by mel u on his blog.
Member of Amazon Associates