A Pale View of Hills feels personal to Kazuo Ishiguro as the author came to the UK from Japan at the age of five and, like its characters, also experienced a cultural transition. However, that’s not the only thing Etsuko’s worried about, and as the story develops, we sense that there’s something not quite right about her friend and her relationships. Instead, tangential thought associations, or the vagaries of memory seemed to move the writing from one episode to the next. I can't see a damn thing for the smog that has made its way to Vancouver from the forest fires in the interior of British Columbia.

Speaks Japanese still with his parents, yes, but in one interview he has described his use of the language as a pidgin Japanese.Both he and Frank are rather ghostly presences in the book, never actually appearing in the flesh on its pages.

Was Etsuko strongly attached to her British husband, with whom she lived in England for some twenty years? Despite this they form a fragile friendship although it seems that Sachiko is using Etsuko on more than one occasion.In their very first conversation, Etsuko tells Sachiko that she is worried about her daughter Mariko, whom she has seen fighting with other children. Thus, we may notice that the major preoccupation of Etsuko (or of her subconscious) is older women, possibly mothers, and little girls. Sachiko at one point says, “I’ll be leaving Japan very shortly,” and Etsuko replies, “I’m very pleased, if this is what you wished. This detail may suggest the rope that Keiko later uses to hang herself in England—a rope Etsuko herself feels responsible for. Here is where she went with Sachiko and Mariko on an outing that left her with “one of the better memories I have of those times.

Archives Archives Tags Art Biography Book List Book Review Books Book Tag Classical Music Classics Debut Novel Detective Fiction Fantasy Fiction French Literature Historical Fiction History Horror Italian Literature Japan Japanese Books Japanese Literature Literary Fiction Music Mystery Non-Fiction Novella Paintings Philip K. It could be argued that, even the novel itself is written in a Japanese style since most of its dialogue feels artificial and awkward, with characters not feeling completely at ease with one another, being keenly aware of the social hierarchy.

The famous 'twist' towards the end is once of the most unusual and clever devices and will make you stop in your tracks and re-think the whole situation. Ishiguro masterfully accomplished that sense of being removed from your memories, as the person who you were when you created them, is not the person you are today - having a nuanced painful understanding of your own mistakes, things that you would do differently if you had another chance for redemption, questioning all of your life choices in the dawn of tragedy. My feelings about The Remains of the Day are mixed up with my feelings about the film, which I saw before I read the book and have seen a couple of times since I read the book, making my memory of the novel unreliable! Much is made here of the role of women, with a key moment involving a conversation about a woman who insists on voting differently from her husband, and the horror the characters feel on hearing this.