The Buried Giant

I almost DNF'ed this. "If I hear him call her princess one more time..." "If one more person forgets what they are talking about in the middle of a conversation...." Due to the nature of the plot, there were more than a few moments that reminded me of

The Unconsoled, also known as "That Time Someone Told Me Their Boring Dream and It Lasted 400 Pages."

But, this book is worth it. The people of Briton, both Britons and minority Saxons, can't hold a memory in their head for very long. Only the very elderly are semi-exempt, and Beatrice and Axl, our protagonists, manage to hold on to the memory of their son long enough to leave their village and search for him. Along the way they meet a Saxon warrior on a quest; a knight of Arthur's round table; and an orphaned boy searching for his mother. Despite their different goals, the four of them keep coming together, until at last the source of the "mist" (that makes them forget) is found. When it is, the debate over whether some memories are best left buried begins.

“But then again I wonder if what we feel in our hearts today isn’t like these raindrops still falling on us from the soaked leaves above, even though the sky itself long stopped raining. I’m wondering if without our memories, there’s nothing for it but for our love to fade and die.”

The Buried Giant feels like a medieval myth or fairy tale: steeped in equal parts history and fantasy, full of symbolism and unexplained meaning, framed within the timeless story of a hero on a quest to slay a monster (albeit focused on the hero’s unintended traveling companions). It actually reminds me a bit of Tolkein, for though their stories are very different, both authors are clearly inspired by the same medieval sources and the tradition of journey narratives that are both symbolic and literal.

The core of the book is its theme: memory. On the micro level, Ishiguro explores the role that memories (good and bad) and a shared past play in a relationship; on the macro level, how they relate to war and peace, ethnic conflict, and generational trauma. What does it mean to share a life together? Is it better to forgive or to forget? Should peace be valued over truth and justice? And who gets to make those choices? The answers are far from clear. One thing I love so much about Ishiguro’s work is that he doesn’t preach; in fact, he doesn’t even obviously pick a side. In

The Buried Giant, he creates a complicated narrative populated by nuanced characters who have their own reasons for the decisions that they make…and he leaves it to the reader to decide who is right.

The story itself is a bit of a puzzle to be worked out, with the ending in particular almost raising more questions than answers. It’s filled with tiny details—the woman with the rabbit, the monks’ cage, the magnetized sand—that feel imbued with symbolic and plot-related meaning. Dialogue is similarly rich with subtext. Even the narrative style itself is a bit of a mystery, as the story is told by a narrator who very rarely interjects to address his unnamed audience, and who seems to come from a much more recent time.

As always, Ishiguro’s writing is gorgeous. Befitting the story, the prose here feels in every way like the modern translation of a deeply poetic medieval text. He is a master of tone, and

The Buried Giant is wildly unlike

The Remains of the Day in every sense, except the extent to which Ishiguro exactly achieves the voice and style he aims for.

Some favorite passages:

You would have searched a long time for the sort of winding lane or tranquil meadow for which England later became celebrated. There were instead miles of desolate, uncultivated land; here and there rough-hewn paths over craggy hills or bleak moorland. Most of the roads left by the Romans would by then have become broken or overgrown, often fading into wilderness. Icy fogs hung over rivers and marshes, serving all too well the ogres that were then still native to this land. The people who lived nearby—one wonders what desperation led them to settle in such gloomy spots—might well have feared these creatures, whose panting breaths could be heard long before their deformed figures emerged from the mist. But such monsters were not cause for astonishment. People then would have regarded them as everyday hazards, and in those days there was so much else to worry about. How to get food out of the hard ground; how not to run out of firewood; how to stop the sickness that could kill a dozen pigs in a single day and produce green rashes on the cheeks of children.

In one such area on the edge of a vast bog, in the shadow of some jagged hills, lived an elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice. Perhaps these were not their exact or full names, but for ease, this is how we will refer to them. I would say this couple lived an isolated life, but in those days few were “isolated” in any sense we would understand.

You may wonder why Axl did not turn to his fellow villagers for assistance in recalling the past, but this was not as easy as you might suppose. For in this community the past was rarely discussed. I do not mean that it was taboo. I mean that it had somehow faded into a mist as dense as that which hung over the marshes. It simply did not occur to these villagers to think about the past—even the recent one.

I might point out here that navigation in open country was something much more difficult in those days, and not just because of the lack of reliable compasses and maps. We did not yet have the hedgerows that so pleasantly divide the countryside today into field, lane and meadow. A traveller of that time would, often as not, find himself in featureless landscape, the view almost identical whichever way he turned. A row of standing stones on the far horizon, a turn of a stream, the particular rise and fall of a valley: such clues were the only means of charting a course.

The ruined villa was further from the road than Beatrice remembered. With the first drops of rain and the sky darkening above them, they found themselves struggling down a long narrow path waist high with nettles through which they had to beat their way with their sticks.

If it’s a couple such as you speak of, who claim their bond is so strong, then I must ask them to put their most cherished memories before me. I’ll ask one, then the other to do this. Each must speak separately. In this way the real nature of their bond is soon revealed.”

Besides, when travellers speak of their most cherished memories, it’s impossible for them to disguise the truth. A couple may claim to be bonded by love, but we boatmen may see instead resentment, anger, even hatred. Or a great barrenness. Sometimes a fear of loneliness and nothing more. Abiding love that has endured the years—that we see only rarely.

‘How will you and your husband prove your love for each other when you can’t remember the past you’ve shared?’

Even if your pain’s a trivial thing, as we know it to be, there’s no sense in feeling it at all if it can be taken away.”

By what strange skill did your great king heal the scars of war in these lands that a traveller can see barely a mark or shadow left of them today?”

“Yet are you so certain, good mistress, you wish to be free of this mist? Is it not better some things remain hidden from our minds?”

An old burial ground. And so it may be. I dare say, sir, our whole country is this way. A fine green valley. A pleasant copse in the springtime. Dig its soil, and not far beneath the daisies and buttercups come the dead. And I don’t talk, sir, only of those who received Christian burial. Beneath our soil lie the remains of old slaughter.

“News of their women, children and elderly, left unprotected after our solemn agreement not to harm them, now all slaughtered by our hands, even the smallest babes. If this were lately done to us, would our hatred exhaust itself? Would we not also fight to the last as they do, each fresh wound given a balm?”

My time will come before long, and I will not turn back to roam this land as you do. I shall greet the boatman contentedly, enter his rocking boat, the waters lapping all about, and I may sleep a while, the sound of his oar in my ears. And I will move from slumber to half-waking, and see the sun sunk low over the water, and the shore moved further still, and nod myself back into dreams till the boatman’s voice stirs me gently once more.

Or is it the she-dragon’s breath makes him forget whatever cause he once had to fear me, yet the dread grows all the more monstrous for being unnamed?

They entered the wood and the ground changed beneath them: there was soft moss, nettles, even ferns. The leaves above them were dense enough to form a ceiling, so that for a while they wandered in a grey half-light.

If the she-dragon’s really slain, and the mist starts to clear, Axl, do you ever fear what will then be revealed to us?”

Should Querig really die and the mist begin to clear. Should memories return, and among them of times I disappointed you. Or yet of dark deeds I may once have done to make you look at me and see no longer the man you do now. Promise me this at least. Promise, princess, you’ll not forget what you feel in your heart for me at this moment. For what good’s a memory’s returning from the mist if it’s only to push away another? Will you promise me, princess? Promise to keep what you feel for me this moment always in your heart, no matter what you see once the mist’s gone.”

Age cloaks us both, as the grass and weeds cloak the fields where we once fought and slaughtered.

Let’s see freely the path we’ve come together, whether it’s in dark or mellow sun.

Without this she-dragon’s breath, would peace ever have come? Look how we live now, sir! Old foes as cousins, village by village.

“What kind of god is it, sir, wishes wrongs to go forgotten and unpunished?”

Then something gave and the blades came apart. As they did so, some dark grain—perhaps the substance that had caused the blades to fasten together in the first place—flew up into the air between them.

“The giant, once well buried, now stirs. When soon he rises, as surely he will, the friendly bonds between us will prove as knots young girls make with the stems of small flowers.

For I suppose there’s some would hear my words and think our love flawed and broken. But God will know the slow tread of an old couple’s love for each other, and understand how black shadows make part of its whole.”

“I was wondering, princess. Could it be our love would never have grown so strong down the years had the mist not robbed us the way it did? Perhaps it allowed old wounds to heal.”