The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro is a surreal and dream-like novel that follows the experiences of Ryder, a concert pianist who arrives in an unnamed Central European city for an important concert. The narrative jumps around like episodes in a dream, with geography bending to accommodate the story and characters appearing in nonsensical places. The characters Ryder meets are reflections of his friends, family, and various people from his past, creating a compressed timeline of his life within a few days. The book evokes a feeling of a dream that goes on and on, blurring the lines between reality and imagination.
The novel is filled with absurd and bizarre events that are distorted and exaggerated reflections of real-life experiences. Readers are taken on a wobbling, shimmering journey through Ryder's world, where the narrative unfolds in a dream-like manner, with characters interacting in disjointed conversations and slipping through doors that lead to different locations. The book spans over 500 pages, creating a tiring yet intriguing read that challenges conventional storytelling and explores themes of identity, memory, and the relationship between the individual and society.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
Content warnings for The Unconsoled include themes of existential distress, familial dysfunction, and surreal situations that may be unsettling for some readers.
From The Publisher:
From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Remains of the Day, here is a novel that is at once a gripping psychological mystery, a wicked satire of the cult of art, and a poignant character study of a man whose public life has accelerated beyond his control.
The setting is a nameless Central European city where Ryder, a renowned pianist, has come to give the most important performance of his life. Instead, he finds himself diverted on a series of cryptic and infuriating errands that nevertheless provide him with vital clues to his own past. In The Unconsoled Ishiguro creates a work that is itself a virtuoso performance, strange, haunting, and resonant with humanity and wit.
Ratings (10)
Incredible (2) | |
Loved It (3) | |
Liked It (2) | |
It Was OK (3) |
Reader Stats (25):
Read It (11) | |
Want To Read (13) | |
Did Not Finish (1) |
1 comment(s)
I don't really know what to say about this book. I can see why some people loved it and others hated it when it was released. It's definitely a narrative experiment, with protagonist Ryder moving through a dreamlike world. In fact Ishiguro hits a lot of common dream highlights: being naked in an inappropriate place, but no one really notices; trying to say something and choking on your words; going through a door and realizing you are in a building far from where you started, which makes total sense at the time. I think this mushy, gooey center is what kept me reading. It was so weird. But at the same time, this book was pretty reliably putting me to sleep every night (added bonus!). I can't say I loved it. It doesn't have the plot of
Never Let Me Go or
The Remains of the Day. It's more of an experimental novel.
What can you read after
The Unconsoled?
About the Author:
KAZUO ISHIGURO was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and moved to Britain at the age of five. His eight previous works of fiction have earned him many honors around the world, including the Nobel Prize in Literature and the…
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