Review: "The Buried Giant" by Kazuo Ishiguro

"You've long set your heart against it, Axl, I know. But it's time now to think on it anew. There's a journey we must go on, and no more delay..."

The Buried Giant begins as a couple set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years.

Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel in nearly a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge, and war. (blurb from goodreads.com)

Rating: 3.75/5

This is a strange, meandering book, rather like the journey undertaken by the characters. It is set in Britain, in a time after the Roman occupation. Half literary, half fantasy, the novel depicts a land where conflict between Saxons and Britons brew but where all the inhabitants are affected by a "mist" of forgetfulness. 

What can you expect from this book? It is nothing like The Remains of the Days or Never Let Me Go, the only two other books I have read by this author. No country house and aging butler. No clones and futuristic setting. Dragons and knights and many references to Arthurian legends. There are also pixies, monasteries, monsters and magical islands. 

However, all this is mostly part of the setting. On the centre stage are an elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice, on a journey to find their son and their lost memories. Theirs is a moving love story. They are well-written, believable characters the reader can easily sympathise with. The other characters in the story were not quite as fleshed out and their behaviour and speech was sometimes a little stilted, a little clichéed. I guess that this was the author's intention and part of this novel's intertextuality with medieval legends and epics. 

I was a little confused by the sudden, short changes, in the course of the novel, in the narration style (and narrator as well). In a way, I think this could have been developped more, because those changes were bit abrupt and left me wondering why the author had chosen to include them.

The ending, which reviews raved about, was indeed moving but I am not certain I truly understood it completely to be honest. As I've said, it was affecting, but I failed to see why reviewers thought it was so powerful and startling. In my opinion, it was the logical ending to this novel and did not come as a surprise. But again, I believe I may have missed the point and should reread it to make certain!

I did really enjoy reading this book, which, like the other novels I read by Kazuo Ishiguro, is beautifully written. It is however, a little bit perplexing, in terms of plot and structure. But isn't great literature meant to make you ask yourselves questions?