Word: ishiguro
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...KAZUO ISHIGURO'S THE REMAINS of the Day (1989) is an astonishing novel in several regards. Its narrator, an aging and obsessively punctilious butler named Stevens, sets out in 1956 on a motoring trip; he wants to persuade Miss Kenton, a former housekeeper at Darlington Hall, to come back and work for the house's new American owner. But as Stevens remembers the good old days, the 1930s, his dry reserve and matter-of-fact tone are threatened by a troubling perception: perhaps his devotion to Lord Darlington, later disgraced for having tried to appease the Nazis, was misplaced. Near...
...Japanese-born, British-educated young writer--Ishiguro was in his late 20s when the novel appeared--to have created Stevens and his insular existence struck many readers as remarkable...
...Unconsoled (Knopf; 535 pages; $25), Ishiguro's first novel since The Remains of the Day, traces much the same emotional arc as its predecessor: a buttoned-up narrator hero goes through several days of experiences and memories that finally reduce him to tears. This time, though, readers may find themselves crying a good deal earlier, not out of sympathy but frustration...
Somewhere around this point, the narrative rules governing The Unconsoled become ominously clear: sequential non sequiturs, ungoverned absurdity. Ishiguro has essentially re-created the world of Alice in Wonderland, but without the commonsensical presence of Alice. Ryder, unlike Lewis Carroll's feisty heroine, is totally passive, grounded only in the vagaries of each passing moment. He is guided through tall doors and short doors; he repeatedly takes, or is taken on, long car trips, only to discover that he can easily walk back to his point of origin. But he hardly ever seems surprised by or interested in the oddities...
...steady a diet of excursions that lead only to more excursions, of interruptions of prior interruptions, can render readers peevish. Ultimately, The Unconsoled suggests a considerable talent pursuing a questionable achievement. Ishiguro has created the literary equivalent of an endless bad dream: the fright engendered by impossible expectations, the frustration of feeling powerless to deflect an apparently inevitable slide toward shame and ruin. But Ryder's ordeal seems less malevolent than capricious. He is the benumbed victim of nothing more sinister than a patchy memory and a tight schedule. Why reproduce a free-floating nightmare when the real thing lurks...