When We Were Orphans: A Novel
by Kazuo Ishiguro
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Book Reviews of When We Were Orphans: A Novel
Book Review: Even Booker winners have deadlines
Summary: 4 Stars
My previous experience of Ishiguro is the peerless Remains of the Day, which is one of the best books I have read. Like Stevens in "Remains", Banks (the principal character of this novel) is a damaged person, damaged by childhood loss rather than by Stevens' obsessive sense of duty. However, unlike Stevens, Banks seems to be recovering, reaching out but attracting, unsurprisingly, other damaged people, an orphan socialite as an object of desire, and an orphan adoptee. Banks's halting steps towards reconnection with the world are riveting, conveyed as they are in the careful and beautiful prose that is this writer's trademark. Perhaps we are headed for a believable denouement, where a subtle but satisfying resolution (from within) redeems Banks somewhat, much as Stevens bantering gave us hope for him at the close of Remains. Perhaps this will take the form of Banks coming to terms with his loss, and seeing that his fascination with detection is a attempt to "save" his parents in a way he could not do as a child.Well, no. The resolution of the mystery of Banks's parents' disappearance is fairly unbelievable, and I mean unbelievable in ways that cannot be explained by the unreliable narrator device. The babblings of consular official Grayson and the uncertain identity of the soldier whom Banks rescues merely add to the confusion that permeates the last third of the book. However, if Banks has "lost it" as he wanders through the Shanghai war zone, he seems to have completely regained it by the last chapter, where there is a balanced and sensible look at the future by the principal character, in a world that confirms the surprising resolution of the plot and therefore, to some extent, confirms Banks's memory. A narrator of variable unreliability, perhaps? Or is it "all a dream", right down to Banks' Sherlockian detective exploits?
**SPOILER(?)**
Or perhaps the publisher called up one day and said "Look Kazuo - I don't care how you end it - I need to see the ms by next Thursday". Cue Uncle Philip.
Book Review: They're coming to take me away ha ha
Summary: 3 Stars
Christopher Banks, the protagonist of this novel joins the pantheon of great unreliable narrators of modern literature. Not quite up there with some of Nabokov's wilder creations - Herman Herman in 'Despair', for instance, who has not one clue what is going on in his own novel, Christopher is nevertheless pretty lost in the murky quagmire of his own memories.
'When we Were Orphans' is a broad, ambitious novel. Set in the inter-war years, when human lifes were dominated by the spectre of mass violence, the narrative shuttles between refined London society and Shanghai. Christopher, largely through a series of meetings with the assertive society girl and fellow orphan, Sarah Hemmings, trys to recall his childhood in Shanghai, espcially the events surrounding his parent's mysterious disappearance.
Memories seem to taunt this poor deluded boy even more than in Ishiguro's previous masterpiece on memory and self denial, The Remains of the Day. Christopher insists he was a happy child yet contemporaries from his schooldays insist he was a 'miserable loner'. He claims his work as a detective has helped him avoid the blandishments of high society yet we frequently encounter him at some black tie event or other.
The narrative begins tightly and impressively in Ishiguro's trademark, flat, refined prose. His style has never been one for fireworks. The real impact of his books comes from what deeper meanings are conveyed, and what is left out all together. Banks keeps control over his refined language but loses control over almost everything else as he returns to Shanghai to try and find out what happens to his parents. When he staggers through a war zone with a crippled Japanese soldier who he mistakenly takes to be a childhood friend of his, towards a house where he believes his mother to be held hostage, the reader feels the poor man has finally cracked. His sanity does recover, slightly, but Ishiguro's novel has lost too much tightness and control by this stage to rank in the class of 'Remains of the Day'.
Book Review: A very complex story with excellent character study...
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of the most complex novels I have read in quite a long time. There are bits and pieces that don't seem coherent at first, but then they make perfect sense. And that is how I was sucked into this fascinating novel. When We Were Orphans tells the story of Christopher Banks, a young boy whose parents disappear under mysterious circumstances while they live in Shanghai. Christopher is sent back to England to live, where he grows up and where the mystery of his parents' disappearance begins to erode his grip on reality. Christopher achieves some notoriety in London (or at least he thinks he has) as a private investigator. He returns after many years to Shanghai to finally try and solve the mystery surrounding his parents' disappearance. He believes he knows what happened to them, even before arriving back in Shanghai. It is his misguided beliefs that lead him into an almost Kafkaesque spiral into unreality and delusion. This section of the book must be read as a partial deluded episode because much of what happens is implausible. The book and Christopher ultimately return to reality and we understand at least part of the truth of Christopher's life and what his parents' outcome had been.
The story is told in first person narrative, and almost from the start Ishiguro tips us off to the idea that Christopher may not be telling us the whole truth, that he may not be able to grasp the whole truth. Christopher's story and the way he tells it is fascinating. Ishiguro is able to navigate seamlessly from time frame to time frame. I thought this was a brilliant work, not as a detective novel, but as a character study of someone who has been fooling himself his entire life. Some readers may find the narrative and the events confusing at times, I did, but I advise readers not to give up on it. This seemingly confusing story is actually an extraordinary, literary experience. When We Were Orphans is one the most thought-provoking books I've read. I recommend this beautiful, staggering novel.
Book Review: Beautiful prose that illuminates the heart and soul of the characters
Summary: 5 Stars
Kazuo Ishiguro is one of those rare writers who can verse about something he has never lived -- or something that is even far from his life. Something like that happened with his `The Remains of the Day", and here in his "When We Were Orphans", one of the most beautiful books he has written.
The most important quality in "When We Were Orphans" is the precise prose he uses to create his characters and describe their actions. At the same time, Ishiguro's text is not self-indulgent. As a matter of fact, this novel is very readable, sometimes addictive, with the plus of being deep and meaningful. The writer has an assured quill extracting life from the darkest side of his characters.
"When We Were Orphans" is about Christopher Banks a very famous and respected detective in the 1930s London. Although he has solved the most intricate crimes, there is still one that haunts him. His parents mysteriously disappeared when he was a child in Shanghai. Now, he thinks it is high time to come back to China and resolve this case.
On the other hand, the world is walking towards to another war, and Banks feels it would be now or never to solve his parents missing. In this fashion, the prose moves from future to past, from London to Shanghai with charm and veracity. Ishiguro goes deep inside his characters' minds, hearts and souls, exposing, therefore, to his reader the most sincere form of narrative.
But, that doesn't mean the writer explains everything in the book. He leaves gaps that would be filled in by the readers. This is one of the most rewarding experiences from reading this novel. Ishiguro assures his place as one of the best novelists from his generation, and the ability to transfers feelings and senses from his characters to his readers -- and not many people publishing books nowadays are able of such device with so much brilliancy.
Book Review: Beautifully evocative writing in a mediocre tale
Summary: 4 Stars
Ishiguro's latest is a classic example of what separates a good book from a great book. His elegant, fluid prose establishes a lush, gorgeous setting in the same way that Wong Kar-wei uses lighting and primary colors to create a creamy, dreamy ambiance like dreams of the past after one too many cocktails."Orphans" impeccable prose is indisputable, but the author's stylistic excellence can only partially compensate for his shortcomings as a storyteller. As the other reviewers have noted, Ishiguro uses the device of the unreliable narrator to create a sense of confusion and surreality, but once it is created, he fails to do anything interesting with it. The climax of the story, which is the discovery that there really wasn't much of a story, leaves the reader feeling cheated rather than suprised.
Ishiguro's father grew up in Old Shanghai, and serves as the basis for the protagonist's playmate. As a setting, he captures the ambiance of decaying romance of the place. The history, however, upon which the worm at the end of the story turns, is flawed. The abduction of a British woman by an inland gangster would have never been tolerated by the Colonial authorities in the 1920s: the right people would be paid off, threats would be made and carried out, and such a matter would be promptly resolved. Moreover, a foreign woman wasn't so prized a trophy, considering all the impoverished White Russian princesses to be had for much less trouble.
Also, the most surreal chapters when, towards the end, Christopher is climbing through the war-devastated ghettos to reach his family's old home, where he thinks his parents are being held, is geographically impossible. The fighting described took part in the slums of the northern Zhabei district, far removed from the posh foreign mansions in which his family might have lived. The foreign areas never saw serious fighting.