Was this novel by Kazuo Ishiguro one of the strangest books I've ever read? Yes. Was it harder to read than writing this review during quarantine with Paw Patrol playing in the background? Jury's out.
I've been very slowly and sporadically whittling away at The Unconsoled for several years now, each time determined to finish it and then losing steam after a couple dozen pages. Kazuo Ishiguro is one of my favorite authors ever, having written other internationally-renowned novels that I adore including Never Let Me Go, The Remains of the Day, and When We Were Orphans - among others I haven't gotten to yet. He has a long list of awards, including the Nobel in 2017.
It is probably a combination of my love of his other works and his shining reputation that kept me plodding on to finish this book, though honestly I often thought it would never happen. It turned out a global pandemic was the seasoning the novel needed to get me through the last couple of hundred pages this week. I read a few reviews of the novel after I finished, and learned that upon its publication in 1995, the novel was received with pretty polarized reactions, from being lauded for its brilliance to being abhorred for its strangeness. This spectrum pretty much encompasses my own experience, though now that I have finished I will say it won me over.
To break it down a bit, because it's such a complicated reading experience that I'm still trying to wrap my head around, I think its difficulty and impenetrability are due to a few major ways Ishiguro violates readers' narrative expectations:
1. Plot (obvs): The Unconsoled is closer to a nightmare than a story in its structure and pacing. Many reviewers describe it as Kafkaesque, which is a fair description - though I think that term is probably overused. By that they are referring to its labyrinthine movement through a seemingly random, irrational series of events. All 500 pages or so take place in a very short period of time, focused on one event, that we move towards at a pace that feels inexplicably interminable. The entire novel is unstable, never allowing the reader to gain their footing before careening or fading into different scenes and locations.
2. Scene: While Ishiguro does meticulously (sometimes overmeticulously) describe the places and scenes the characters move through, he does not provide the expected narrative cues that normally signal a change in location or scene. Sometimes the character travels for way too long to a place that was said to be very close, or is suddenly in a different location without really having traveled anywhere. The character seems to accept this, but also sometimes becomes aware of these movements with some frustration.
3. Perspective: There is certainly a protagonist in this novel, but the perspective of the novel sometimes moves from the observational perspective of the renowned pianist Ryder to whoever his gaze and hearing is following past the boundaries of his awareness, seamlessly shifting the reader into the perspective of that different character in a disorienting manner.
4. Dialogue: Or better put, monologues. At times the dialogue feels somewhat natural, with a back-and-forth conversation between characters, but on many occasions the novel falls into a character's monologue for several pages without paragraph breaks and with a lot of repetition. It's exhausting to follow and in some cases actually stressful. It's also part of what kept making me lose the thread.
That doesn't sound great, does it? So why was I converted? Well, for the last couple of hundred pages I finally fell into the (non)rhythm of the novel and started to more vividly see the intention and purpose behind those narrative transgressions. It's unsettling how well it captures the elusive feeling of dreams and nightmares with its disorientation, its endlessness, and one of my favorite effects - those moments when the horizon line keeps moving beyond your reach, when you are running but not getting anywhere, or the person you are reaching for keeps eluding your grasp. The shifts in scene and perspective highlight the experience of a life that is out of control - the feeling when we are pulled in every direction except the one we intended for ourselves. In a very relatable way, the experiences of the characters reflect the frustrating inevitability that our lives will not follow the trajectories we set for them, because of our own actions or the pull toward the conflicting trajectories of those around us.
Finally, and most importantly, The Unconsoled is an inventive and perceptive, if in many ways distressing, character study that starkly lays bare the vulnerabilities of human beings. In those changing perspectives and unstoppable monologues the characters find themselves revealing those embarrassing trains of thought, anxieties, misconceptions, prejudices, and insecurities that we often filter out of more socially-acceptable conversations. Even the main character seems to vacillate between absolute assurance of his own importance, supported by those around him, and guilt-ridden self-loathing. He is both insensitive and distressed, just as other characters are both irredeemable and sympathetic.
The Unconsoled is a novel that goes nowhere and everywhere at once, never letting us settle in while also trapping us deep in its disconcerting maze. It is brilliant, and frustrating, and beautifully written, and sometimes impossible to read. I felt victorious when I read the last page, not because the ending was satisfying, or even because it felt like an ending, but because at last I felt a bit like I understood the novel - and more importantly (alarmingly?) that the novel understood me. Maybe it took the interminable, bizarre, irrational experience of a pandemic quarantine to grant me access.
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