A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro

My mind is pensive today, reflecting on my trip to Texas to see Jim's family. I didn't get too much stitching done though I did finish one of those Fetching fingerless gloves before running out of yarn...Unlike the pattern suggests, I was not able to finish a pair with one skein of Debbie Bliss' Cashmerino Aran. I did bead a little on my November BJP and hope to work on it more today.

While I was gone, I read my November book for the 1% Well-Read Challenge and the story has haunted me for a few days. It was a rather short book of 180 or so pages and I was able to finish it in those early morning hours before the rest of the house woke up.

A Pale View of Hills was written by Kazuo Ishiguro whose family emigrated to Great Britain in 1960 when he was six years old. Ishiguro grew up and was educated in Britain and has achieved many literary awards for his fiction. A Pale View of Hills was his first novel and won the Royal Society of Literature's Winifred Holtby Prize for the best first novel of 1982 . He later went on to write other award-winning novels including The Remains of the Day which was made famous to me by actors Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in the wonderful movie released in 1993. Though I have not yet read the book, I am eager to read it now that I finished A Pale View of Hills.

The book is a story about Etsuko, a Japanese woman who grew up in Nagasaki after the dropping of the atomic bomb. Etsuko marries a Japanese man and has a daughter, Keiko. Etsuko leaves her first husband, emigrates to Britain with an English serviceman who she later marries and with whom she has her second daughter, Niki. At the opening of the novel, Etsuko is widowed and middle-aged. Her daughter, Niki is visiting her after Keiko, the oldest daughter, has committed suicide by hanging herself in a London apartment.

The book does not have a typical beginning, middle and end but flows from present day through the dreams and memories of Etsuko's past while living one Summer in Nagasaki. Much of her memory deals with her friendship and infatuation with a woman named Sachiko and her odd, anti-social daughter, Mariko. There are many similarities between the lives of Sachiko and the lives of Etsuko and the reader is left to wonder whether the story of Sachiko and her daughter Mariko is actually the story of Etsuko and her daughter Keiko.

I like this sort of novel...the kind where memory blends indistinctly with experience, with dreams and with reality. One is never quite sure if Sachiko and her daughter Mariko are a metaphor for Etsuko and her oldest daughter Keiko...but I believe it to be so.

Sachiko's daughter Mariko is an unusual child who doesn't play with other children, doesn't go to school, and often runs away from her mother. Her mother is equally as odd in my opinion and often abandons her daughter for hours at a time to spend time with an American GI named "Frank". Emotionally, Sachiko does not act like much of a mother at all though she does manage to feed and clothe her daughter. The story gets very macabre when Sachiko drowns her daughter's kittens. Etsuko, who witnesses the incident, shows no emotion at all which is the first time when I realized this story is not linear and I began to wonder...what's really going on here??

There are a number of occasions where the girl Mariko runs away, and Sachiko, her mother, seems nonchalant about finding her. Instead, it is Etsuko who searches for her at different times throughout the novel. When she finds the girl, she is often afraid of Etsuko and keeps asking her why she is dragging a rope that is wrapped around her foot...Invariably, Etsuko says that somehow it's just a piece of rope that has gotten caught around her foot while she has been looking for the girl...It smacks of the macabre and is more than a little eerie since it is metaphorical for the rope that Etsuko's daughter uses to hang herself.

There is lots to think about with this book: the indirectness of the novel is very indicative of the Japanese way of speaking; the cultural changes that occured in Japan post-atom bomb are wonderfully portrayed in the characters of Nagasaki; the emotions of guilt and betrayal are hinted at and suggested only in the macabre dreams and memories of Etsuko --- It's really quite brilliantly written but not the kind of book you should pick up and put down -- it really should be read in one or two sittings for full effect.

I will definitely go on to read The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans by the same author since I'm now very curious about his style of writing. Next up on my list for the 1% Well-Read Challenge is A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul. V.S Naipaul has won the Nobel Prize for literature and is also an emigrant to Great Britain. Hmm.....