Dreamlike, a little dull, powerful payoff
3 stars
I generally love Ishiguro but I found this one...odd. The tone is very distant and much more stilted than his other, very intimate, works. It's probably intentional: the half-historical half-fantastical setting feels like a fable so it makes sense to tell it at a distance like one. This also works with the themes of pain and forgetting on both a small and a grand scale. If everything is shrouded in a fog of forgetfulness, why would it feel intimate and real? So, coherent style choice but if you have an itch for Ishiguro's best works' tone, this isn't going to scratch it.
There are two stories going on here which explore the same idea at a different scale: forgetting wrongdoings in a marriage and forgetting pain on a broad cultural level. The way feelings linger even when the event is forgotten. Etc. That's all very rich. Unfortunately, despite being short, …
I generally love Ishiguro but I found this one...odd. The tone is very distant and much more stilted than his other, very intimate, works. It's probably intentional: the half-historical half-fantastical setting feels like a fable so it makes sense to tell it at a distance like one. This also works with the themes of pain and forgetting on both a small and a grand scale. If everything is shrouded in a fog of forgetfulness, why would it feel intimate and real? So, coherent style choice but if you have an itch for Ishiguro's best works' tone, this isn't going to scratch it.
There are two stories going on here which explore the same idea at a different scale: forgetting wrongdoings in a marriage and forgetting pain on a broad cultural level. The way feelings linger even when the event is forgotten. Etc. That's all very rich. Unfortunately, despite being short, I often felt bored. The final scenes, however, have a heart-wrenching payoff so good that I can admit I have, ironically, forgotten the sting of the dull bits.
