When We Were Orphans: A Novel
by Kazuo Ishiguro
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Book Reviews of When We Were Orphans: A Novel
Book Review: High Expectations Unmet
Summary: 4 Stars
The problem, I think, with this novel, is that if one has had any prior experience with Ishiguro, as I did with Remains of the Day, then one is bound to come into this one with unreasonably high expectations. And although this is not a bad novel by any means, it nevertheless fails to achieve the lofty heights gained by Remains, and proves, alas, that Mr. Ishiguro is a mere mortal after all. The plot in this one has to do with a young Englishman who is born and bred in Shanghai in the 1930's, and the story is told in the first-person by him. At the tender age of nine or so, his parents are, one by one, kidnapped. He is sent to England for the remainder of his youth, becomes a detective, then returns to Shanghai in 1939 to resolve the mystery of their disappearance.
If you have been avoiding this novel because you have been told that it is a jumbled mishmash of confusing recollections and psychoanalytic dissection, don't. Instead, the story is told in a straight-forward manner and is easy to follow. In fact, one could describe it as a page-turner, with the mystery it has at the core of its plot, and the very intriguing locale.
Nevertheless, it doesn't take long before you realize that you are in the hands of that classic literary device known as the "unreliable narrator." So you must pay attention.
And this is where the book falls. Although we know that what we are being told is not always the truth, the author fails to give us enough clues so that we can know for sure what the truth is. Now to some degree this may be what he was trying to convey: our memories and our recollections are not always as accurate as we believe them to be. This is fine, but at some point the reader requires some sort of branch to hang onto as we are hurtled down this river.
For example, when the narrator returns to Shanghai, it is made clear to us that everyone in the city expects that he will be reunited with his parents shortly, even though he has been gone and they have been missing for twenty years. Now, it's one thing to suffer under a misperception, but this is almost delusional. Does he really expect that he's going to find his parents, and does he really believe we will accept this without his ever explaining why? Shortly thereafter, he is searching for the home he believes his parents have been kept in all of these years, which happens at that moment to be in the middle of a war zone between the Chinese and the Japanese armies. He is indignant when the Chinese officer refuses to take him into this zone. This is no memory lapse, this is completely irrational behavior.
There are several other examples of this kind of thing, which seem to serve the reader no other purpose than to leave him scratching his head. It's even more baffling because the narrator is in contact throughout the novel with other characters. Surely, some of them could have been used to shed some light on what is going on here; unfortunately, most of them don't. What is the author's purpose? By the time one gets to the end, in trying to sift through the truth of all this, one could reasonably conclude that the entire thing was a dream, feverishly concocted by a little boy in a strange land traumatized forever by the disappearance of his parents. Is it?
But no, that's not it either, as the mystery of their disappearance is ultimately resolved in a rather conventional way. We end up with nothing but a bunch of red herrings.
This is disappointing because without giving us any perspective, Mr. Ishiguro misses out on some interesting thematic implications as well. For example, there are several broad hints that the European community in Shanghai essentially fiddled while Shanghai was burned by the Japanese, but because his narrator's recollections are so flawed, how is one to make literal sense of this? Also, the narrator, shortly after discovering it, apparently loses the love of his life to his continued pursuit of this mystery. Interesting, if this obsession caused him to lose his chance for happiness, but he is unfortunately so vague about it that it is unclear to us whether this truly was a golden opportunity for love to begin with.
Having said that, though, it must be remembered that this is an Ishiguro book after all, and there is plenty enough good in here to recommend it. There is the language, for one thing, which is as elegantly beautiful as it was in Remains of the Day. There are the characters, perfectly etched, particularly the mother, who comes across as stern but also girlish, playful, and pretty, and for whom the heart of any boy would ache with love. And there are the narrator's childhood reminiscences as well, which with his friend and their fantastical games and behavior in general are as dead-on accurate as any account of childhood I've ever read. His mother, for example, is attempting to explain something to him, but he, in his nine-year old mind, is instead curiously interested in how many steps he can actually take up the staircase while leaving his hand on the rail at the starting point. These sorts of details, sharply rendered by Ishiguro, give the reader an acute sense of compassion for his characters.
A good book, and a good try. Mr. Ishiguro certainly aims high. But this time, anyway, he didn't hit his target. Whatever it was.
Book Review: Stinging 'Catch 22' black farce highlights Western blindness
Summary: 5 Stars
The book sets itself up as a mannered English detective novel, with the protagonist (Christopher Banks) as an older, educated voice reviewing his childhood in Shanghai. He takes himself very seriously, and the prose is always measured and careful, controlled. Ishiguro also wrote The Remains of the Day, and likewise many will find it stifling. L. read it and got annoyed at the way this older voice was always apologising or justifying or condescending to the actions and thoughts of the child.
Still, definitely not a totally self-aware character, and some of the effect is to deliberately tell us something about the older character by the way he narrates the younger.
If you're looking for places to exclaim, "Holmes, that's brilliant," at the deductive prowess of someone described in the book as a celebrated detective, it doesn't really happen. But somehow you don't seem to notice because of all the tangents describing people and places.
There's also the (seemingly) central mystery to carry you along. Gradually you realise that the persona's parents both disappeared, and this is the big case he's setting himself up to solve.
Ishiguro doesn't let him (or us) just get on with solving it though - there are other people and issues distracting him. Still, it does appear that finally he's about to crack it.
Up til now you may have just thought this was an OK novel in terms of presenting characters and something of the nature of how life unfolds, often without our control. More than a mere detective novel, but we'll take that too.
Then the whole thing just departs - and makes it, in my opinion, a stand out book. If you haven't read it yet and you want to get the effect, don't read on.
He goes back to Shanghai, but there is invasion/civil war in China. The Europeans are still there in their safe section, while the Kuo-min-tang are putting up the only resistance to Japanese invasion. Banks is suitably disgusted by the way the Europeans callously enjoy their dance parties while bombs are landing on the populace around them. They ignore any responsibility or compassion.
Meanwhile, he's getting closer to solving the case! He thinks he may have found where his parents are hidden, and sets out to find them. This is complicated by a romantic sub-plot, but more so by the fact that this house is behind the battle line. The narration, along with the narrator, becomes more and more fevered and dreamlike/nightmarish. We are wanting him to solve this case 'against a backdrop of the Japanese invasion of China', but (unlike the context of a thousand other novels set in violent times) the invasion refuses to remain a backdrop. Rather inconveniently for our hero and us, minor characters keep getting in the way, can't they just go off and be dealt with and let us/him get on with it. Don't they realise how important this is - this is his big case! The central plotline of the book. But while we agree with him, we get increasingly uncomfortable with the way he forces Chinese characters - still subservient to Europeans - to risk (and lose) their lives to enable him to fulfil his (our) quest.
By the time he finally gets to the house, THE house, where he can be reunited with his long lost parents, the house has been recently shelled. Instead of finding his parents, he finds a very recently injured and orphaned girl with the corpses of her parents. The irony is thick, as we can't feel sorry for him in the light of what's just happened in this house, and doubtless in a thousand others. He loses it, and starts trying to comfort the girl, "Don't worry, I'm a celebrated detective, I can solve this crime." He insanely pulls out his magnifying glass and starts looking for clues. This is brutally effective farce.
But this is what we do. Real people and suffering in real life serve as a mere 'background' for the dramas of our own lives. I remember a med student coming back from working overseas with some desperately poor, but the way she narrated it, they were merely interesting experiences. It was a novel holiday.
Likewise, for us it was a novel thing to hear her relate her experiences.
Ishiguro, for my money, really captures something of our British Raj approach to the darkies (or whoever), and the drippingly unconscious condescension even when we're speaking well of them.
A very clever way to use a convention to make such a powerful statement.
He does solve the mystery later, but by this time we're all a bit numb, and it's all much more in perspective.
And very strong that what we're getting into perspective is something that in the west would be something any individual could use to claim utter precedence on sympathy - the disappearance of their parents when they were only a child.
We were interested in what happened to them, and we wanted Banks to find them, but, like him, by the time we do we don't really care nearly as much. We know it's not that important. Or if it is, we're just ignoring a whole heap of much more important things constantly, merely because they happen to poor people.
Book Review: Slow, overhyped, and unbelievable
Summary: 2 Stars
I just finished reading Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans. It was well written. The dialogue and descriptions of people and places were excellent. The ending was shocking, surprising, and fast-paced. That being said, I regret that I bought it and would not recommend it to anyone else. The plot was thin, perhaps because it was stretched over too long a book. Until the last tape the pace was too slow for a mystery. A few leaps backward and forward in time are acceptable but he made so many it became a bit difficult to follow the story line. Worse, he sometimes jumped from "A" to "C" in situations without going through "B," or even referring to it in "C" so we knew how he got to "C." An example of this was his acceptance of, and seeming agreement with, the assumption of the city councilman, his old schoolmate Morgan, and the Chinese family in his old home, that Christopher's parents were not only alive but still being held prisoner in Shanghi. We were not told about anything Christopher had discovered either in London or after arriving in Shanghi that would have justified that assumption.
In fact, we were not told about anything he had discovered in England that would indicate he had reason to believe his parents were still in Shanghi or even still alive. Yet there is an implication that he had discovered something, some lead or information that might make a trip to Shanghi worthwhile.
The great buzz that his arrival in Shanghi created and his VIP treatment was not believable. Even if he were a British detective of Sherlock Holmes' stature there would not be any reason for people living in Shanghi to be so impressed by him or to be so interested in his case---especially since the case was a personal one involving his parents. With the civil war raging around them and the Japanese invaders possibly about to seize Shanghi it was ridiculous to have some of the residents saying that they thought he could help with that situation.
A couple incidents of chance meetings would be believable because they do happen in real life. However, there are more than a lifetime of lucky chance meetings in this book. Finding the old Chinese detective through Morgan's recollection of him as a street bum, finding his childhood Japanese friend as a wounded Japanese soldier who will again act out the rescue of Christopher's parents, and finding the house of the old blind man through the driver Sara provided were all a bit too much. That last one especially because the driver was described as young, maybe even 15 years old, but he remembered the old blind actor from decades before and even knew where he lived. Unbelievable.
Also, the 1916 kidnapping incident he asked the former Chinese detective about (to locate the house where his parents might be held) would have been long before his parents were kidnapped. The probability that they were held in the same house from the time they were kidnapped until Christopher was a grown man with an international reputation (several decades?) was too small to make that whole part of his quest a logical course of action.
Even before he met them, the Chinese family living in his old home had apparently accepted that they would have to give it to because it had been his family home, even though the British company rather than his family owned it. Not believable.
This man who derided the foreigners in China for the way they treated the Chinese (They had no sense of shame about it.) berated and browbeat his Chinese driver and the Chinese lieutenant, both of whom risked their lives to help him find the house he wanted to locate. That destroyed much of my sympathy for him.
The Chinese lieutenant would not be likely to know about or care about Christopher's case and would be extremely unlikely to desert his post to lead Christopher to a house near or even behind the Japanese lines. Similarly, although he was supposed to be dedicated to finding his parents, Christopher quickly decided to run off with to Macau with another man's wife (shame?) but then just as quickly abandoned her at the waterfront (more shame?), along with the possessions he had selected as important enough to fit in the one suitcase she allowed him, so he could run off to find the house where he though his parents were still prisoners after several decades.
Having found the house he had risked his life, and the lives of others, to find, the great detective then spent time examining a wounded dog rather than quickly searching the house for his parents. There certainly are such dysfunctional people in real life but there are an unbelievable number of them in this book.
The warlord, Wang Po, was described as having taken Christopher's mother away "in the dead of the night." But we were previously told that she was kidnapped while Uncle Philip took him to the market during the day. How did Christopher learn about "Diana Roberts," the European woman who was being held in a missionary home for the aged in Hong Kong?
Did anybody edit this book? Did anybody check it for plot continuity and agreement?
Book Review: Another Psychological Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
I've been trying to figure out why some reviewers thought "When We Were Orphans" wasn't as good as Kazuo Ishiguro's much-loved "The Remains of the Day." After "Remains," we clearly have high expectations of Mr. Ishiguro. But perhaps the difference between the two works is one of immediate accessibility.Both books look at the way certain mental processes affect people. "Remains" concerns a moral sense of rightness and self-denial in a setting we can visualize and understand. "Orphans," I think, demands more from readers. Its overriding theme is the foggy, shifting filter of memory, and this filter takes us into murkier, more complex territory, where we're required to deduce how events have shaped the protagonist's thoughts and motives.
When he was still a kid, Christopher Banks, the protagonist, suffered a huge trauma. His parents were kidnapped, and he was then unwillingly plucked from his home in the International Settlement in Shanghai and sent to live with an aunt in England. Being sent away from everything familiar and comforting would have been hard enough, but being sent away must also have silently conveyed that his parents were forever and irretrievably lost.
Christopher copes with this by deft acts of self-deception, and we are constantly left to inquire how much of Christopher's memories and perceptions are real. His memories (like all memories) are of what he told himself had happened, rather than uniformly what actually happened. He believes what he seems to need to believe. Here, Mr. Ishiguro brilliantly, and subtly, portrays Christopher as an unreliable narrator, wrapped in a reassuring cloak of illusion.
He and his boyhood friend, Akira, for instance, create an impossible scenario where Christopher's father is cared for by his kidnappers as if they were his servants. He recalls a happy boat trip to England, and a smooth merger into English life, when in truth he was a miserable loner, endlessly upset by the loss of his parents, and largely made fun of by his English school chums.
When he's in his mid-thirties, Christopher decides to return to Shanghai, find his parents, and liberate them from their kidnappers. Although the plan is futile to the point of being ludicrous, what seems to be going on in Christopher's mind is that he had continually rejected the idea of the permanence of his parents' loss and was trying, on some unconscious level, to put right a world gone completely topsy-turvy that caused him vast pain. Thus, when the effort to find his parents takes a dramatic turn, the events that follow seem natural to Christopher, even as they bring anguish to the reader.
There is much more to this book. Events in the world at large partially mirror Christopher's situation. When Christopher returns to Shanghai, it is 1937. It is the eve of World War II, and the world seems to be teetering on the verge of collapse. The Japanese have attacked China, shells are falling, and soldiers are fighting hand to hand. Yet within the International Settlement, the inhabitants lie to themselves about the seriousness of the situation and their own safety, and the parties and entertainments continue unabated. The British lie to themselves about their role in the Chinese opium trade and about its devastating effects. (Beyond, of course, the Western allies lie to themselves about the policy of appeasement.) In the midst of this, it is highly problematic whether England as a leader, and even democracy itself, can survive. One character, in fact, Sir Cecil, seems to be the personification of good British intentions gone awry and dissipated abroad in temptation. These are issues which Mr. Ishiguro puts out for readers to contemplate for themselves.
The "relationship" stories also command attention. Christopher is both drawn to and wary of an attraction to Sarah Hemmings, a young woman who comes and goes in his life. She's an orphan like him, who desperately wants to attach herself to someone who makes a difference, who improves the world, and so fills out a hollow in her life. And there is also young Jennifer, an orphan whom Christopher serendipitously finds and takes in as his ward. They come to love each other in a father-daughter way that delicately seeps around them.
The writing in this book is as surpassingly controlled, elegant and poignant as we might expect from Mr. Ishiguro. The episodes that relate to Christopher's childhood are particularly true, alive and touching. And the ending is most satisfying. I think Mr. Ishiguro ranks with the best writers I've ever encountered, and I give this book five solid stars.
Book Review: How not to use The Unreliable Narrator
Summary: 2 Stars
This is the first Ishiguro book I've read, and while it contains the precise elegant prose I had anticipated, the story itself collapses under the strain of Ishiguro's awkward and inept use of the unreliable narrator. The unreliable narrator is a familiar narrative technique, perhaps more so in film (eg. The Usual Suspects, Memento) than in literature, and for whatever reason, many readers seem to have missed the obvious-and oftimes clumsy-clues Ishiguro provides. However, it's clear early on in this faux mystery that not all Christopher Banks tells the reader is entirely to be trusted.The novel revolves around events in Banks's childhood in the International Settlement in Shanghai, a few years after the turn of the century. This is an idyllic time, as the days drift by while he plays with his Japanese neighbor Akira. In a bizarre turn of events, his father, who works for one of the large British opium importers disappears-kidnapped according to Banks (although we never hear of a ransom note). Soon after this, his mother disappears as well, also kidnapped we are told. When neither reappears, the boy is sent to England, where he tries to fit into British schools and society. This portion is rather interesting, as it no doubt reflects the author's own experience as a young boy transplanted to England. He continues his tale of growing up to become a famous detective by recounting certain episodes, and his developing friendship with a beautiful, but rather pathetic, society girl.
Banks is clearly not well adjusted-existing in a semi-delusional state where he is in many ways still a child. From his profession as detective to complete lack of sexuality, he is the epitome of self-repression. His adoption of Jennifer, an orphaned British girl living overseas, offers all kinds of possibilities but ultimately leads nowhere, leaving the reader wondering what purpose the subplot serves other than to reinforce the titular theme. When he abandons her to return to Shanghai in the mid-1930s to "rescue" his kidnapped parents, one wonders why he offered his guardianship at all. The scene in Shanghai upon his return is fairly well-wrought, with the International Settlement a small protected enclave as Japanese invaders try to capture the city from Chinese defenders, If you've read J.G. Ballard's memoir, Empire of the Sun or seen the film, you'll recognize the situation.
However, it is at this juncture that the novel starts slipping into the mire. For some reason, Banks seems to think his presence and the resolution of his parents' disappearance will somehow lead to a resolution of the Sino-Japanese conflict-and by extension, world tensions. While we understand at this point that he is deluded, for some reason Ishiguro has the characters around him reinforce this delusion, especially the embassy protocol official Mr. Grayson. At this point, we are confused-for in the first part of the book, Ishiguro uses the discrepancies between statements by supporting characters and Banks recollections to clue us in that his narration is not completely reliable. So, in the second half, when supporting characters apparently support his by now obvious delusions, it goes against the structure Ishiguro's established and renders the narrative a complete muddle. This gets particularly out of hand when in the climactic race to the house where he believes his parents are being held, he encounters Chinese soldiers who both know who he is and eventually agree to help him at the expense of their own orders and safety. At this point the novel loses any hope of redemption, and indeed, when the true circumstances of his parents are made known, it's a revelation worthy of 1950s pulp magazines, not a world-class author.
From the standpoint of pure use of language, the book is lovely and quite readable, what remains mystifying is how Ishiguro could have allowed his use of the unreliable narrator to slip its lead and destroy any sense of sympathy and interest we had invested in the characters and outcome.