The Unconsoled | Kazuo Ishiguro | Reading outside your comfort zone

The Unconsoled | Kazuo Ishiguro | weird..

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The Unconsoled

	The Unconsoled Kazuo Ishiguro Vintage, 1996 - 544 pages average customer review:based on 142 reviews view larger image
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Reading outside your comfort zone

When I finished this book I threw it across the room, I was so frustrated and angry. What the hell was that all about? It was months later I realised what a masterpiece it was.
While it didn't give me what I have come to expect from 'a good book' , it really got under my skin and gave me a different experience of reading and it is that I enjoyed immensely.
This is not a book to take on holiday or to read for relaxation and escapism. Kazuo Ishiguro keeps you on edge, hoping for some kind of resolution. I wanted answers, I wanted guarantees that the main character gets to his piano concert. You don't get them and you are led like an anxious dreamer into endless interesting yet impossible scenarios that take the main character further and further from where he should be.
At the time it is very frustrating, later you realise how accustomed you are to the rhythms of conventional storytelling. My thoughts have returned to this remarkable book on a regular basis. The reader is really the unconsoled of the title and reflection over time is soothing.

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weird..

I was quite shocked when I came to Part 2 of the book. It was only then that I realised that the Unconsoled was Mr Ryder's adventure in only 3 days.

Nothing much happened to Mr Ryder in the book. Many people just came along asking him to run errands - almost as if he's obliged to do so. However, what made me like him a lot was his calm narrative sound and his ability to sound so cool in all situations. Because of this, times when he got irritated surprised me and made me realised that he might not be what he seemed to be. All these was enough to keep me interested, so much so that i actually finished this long book.

I find it weird how he forgets everything in his past and ended up in this town that took Music so seriously.
There are many weird incidences, like going one whole round in town and realised that he's back and the same place and also one during the party when he stood up and attempted to speak, only to find that the buttons of his pajamas fell apart. Also, the long anticipated performance of his did not happen in the end and I was quite disappointed.

To be honest, I'm still quite confused what message Kazuo Ishiguro is trying to convey through this book.
However overall, I love this book because his writing was nice enough to keep me reading on and on. However, I'm not sure if many people will like it.

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'Remembrance of Things Past'

Ryder, a concert pianist and the narrator in Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Unconsoled, is summoned to a European city to perform. When he arrives there is no one to greet him, only the dreary foyer with its potted palms and dusty lighting that could belong to any one of a dozen cities from Oslo to Budapest to Luxemburg. Finally, an elderly porter shows up and together Ryder and Gustav take the elevator to Ryder's room and we become party to Gustav's problematic view of life.
It is here, that the story begins, set in motion by the first of a series of fascinating, if somewhat long-winded monologues. All of which are set in a time that appears equally ungrounded,in the yearsperhaps between two world wars, or the present and sometime in the future.
The novel explores what it is like to travel, either as a person of some renown, or as a returning family member. How it might feel to be out of step with one's community; how a sense of disorientation could overtake any one of us whether we are on a book tour or on business, or simply returning to small town America.
What, for instance, is expected when meeting new people? People who in Ryder's case trigger memory: memories of guilt or passion, of compromising a friend or abandoning a parent. Perhaps something unintentional and forgotten until we are confronted.
Then, like Ryder, we too, are held in thrall having to endure whatever it is until we can leave and even then we have only a vague idea of our crime.
Ryder is implored and confronted at every turn. Many have just cause; others are a complete waste of his time. But in spite of a need for sleep and more importantly a need to practice he attends to them all.
These are the unconsoled. The story is set in a landscape that that is as foreign as it is familiar and as changeable as a fast flick, a landscape whose sameness is a pervasive monotone reminiscent of the Soviet Union or London's East End, where even the seasons are as undistinguishable as the hotel décor and the uniforms of the town's inhabitants.
The Unconsoled, a wonderful experiment in the manipulation of time and sense. And yet, eventually, every story and every character comes full circle. All requests are heard and those in need of comfort are consoled.
All accept Ryder.
While he never does get to perform, or to attend his own recital, or address publicly those issues he has been commandeered to speak on, Ryder is nevertheless happy. In the final take we see him receiving consolation from a relative stranger. Ryder says tomorrow he must be in Helsinki; he will be leaving. However, in the last three days we have a sense that he has finally come home.
The Unconsoled is a masterpiece that is not recommended for the faint hearted,

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Nightmare in Mitteleuropa

It is interesting to recount one's own dreams; it can be boring to listen to other people's. But that is what this book turns out to be: an extended dream narrative marked by irrational shifts of time, logic, and perspective, told by a narrator who is caught up in events but is powerless to stop them. The texture is very similar to the Shanghai sequence at the end of WHEN WE WERE ORPHANS, only here occupying the entire book. Here too, it all comes down to a search for one's parents, but the pay-off hardly justifies such a disorienting means of getting there.

Ishiguro remains the bard of the small egoist; his works are peopled by apparently modest people who nonetheless are turned entirely inward -- saying something, answering it, then answering all possible responses to that answer -- all without letting the other person get a word in. So the book consists largely of monologues by a variety of people whose basic manner of speaking nonetheless appears much the same. A genius he may be, as THE REMAINS OF THE DAY testifies, but this one was heavy going.

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