Reading
Just finished reading Ishiguro's "The Buried Giant" and I must say I liked it.
Because of certain controversy sparked by the author's use of fantasy tropes, I was curious, bought it and read it in a couple of days, and I really liked it.
The story takes place in a post-Arthurian Britain, in which a couple of elders leave their hobbiton-like village in search of a son they barely remember they once had. Their lack of memory is undersstandable: there's a dragon breathe hanging all over the country that sucks memories of the past from everybody, so no one remembers, at times not even what happened a few hours ago. The story has a hallucinatory, dreamlike quality, a strange rythm, as the couple start their trip and fumble their way from their village. Then there are other characters: an old and wizened sir Gawain, a mysterious boy chased from his hamlet, a Saxon young warrior raised among Britons... There are ogres, and pixies, and goats; and strange things happening, and the conversations are stilted, and a bit repetitive and absurd, but as a whole, as the tale slowly unfolds, is like the sun slowly piercing the mist of forgetfulness.
The artifice actually works for me. The language is strange: not exactly archaic, not modern, a bit oniric, slow, at times a bit absurd. It really took me some time to warm up to the story, and in the beginning I even found the characters mildly anoying, but then I grew interested, and was dragged into this strange story. Many of the reviews mention the hidden past, the edited official history and designed collective amnesia, the weight of silenced memories of horrors once comitted, as the main point of the story; how memories of terrible things that happen in the past are better left buried, or that full memory and peace and love can not live together.
To me, the story though is one of changing of seasons, changing of generations, of time and history always, relentlessly moving on, no mater what dam we build to keep it at bay. We do what we can, what we must, with the time we are given, (as Gandalf tells Frodo) but we must also know that it will only work for a while; that the tides of time will soon pass all over our story as well as those who came before. Something ends and something begins, and sometimes it's the same past catching up, transformed, in different ways. All in all, a beautiful, strange read.
Because of certain controversy sparked by the author's use of fantasy tropes, I was curious, bought it and read it in a couple of days, and I really liked it.
The story takes place in a post-Arthurian Britain, in which a couple of elders leave their hobbiton-like village in search of a son they barely remember they once had. Their lack of memory is undersstandable: there's a dragon breathe hanging all over the country that sucks memories of the past from everybody, so no one remembers, at times not even what happened a few hours ago. The story has a hallucinatory, dreamlike quality, a strange rythm, as the couple start their trip and fumble their way from their village. Then there are other characters: an old and wizened sir Gawain, a mysterious boy chased from his hamlet, a Saxon young warrior raised among Britons... There are ogres, and pixies, and goats; and strange things happening, and the conversations are stilted, and a bit repetitive and absurd, but as a whole, as the tale slowly unfolds, is like the sun slowly piercing the mist of forgetfulness.
The artifice actually works for me. The language is strange: not exactly archaic, not modern, a bit oniric, slow, at times a bit absurd. It really took me some time to warm up to the story, and in the beginning I even found the characters mildly anoying, but then I grew interested, and was dragged into this strange story. Many of the reviews mention the hidden past, the edited official history and designed collective amnesia, the weight of silenced memories of horrors once comitted, as the main point of the story; how memories of terrible things that happen in the past are better left buried, or that full memory and peace and love can not live together.
To me, the story though is one of changing of seasons, changing of generations, of time and history always, relentlessly moving on, no mater what dam we build to keep it at bay. We do what we can, what we must, with the time we are given, (as Gandalf tells Frodo) but we must also know that it will only work for a while; that the tides of time will soon pass all over our story as well as those who came before. Something ends and something begins, and sometimes it's the same past catching up, transformed, in different ways. All in all, a beautiful, strange read.