Kazuo Ishiguro - When We Were Orphans

Such a sad novel; the final pages in particular are crushing. Ishiguro is a wonderful writer, and his Christopher Banks is, like The Remains of the Day's Stevens, a study in one person's inability to find happiness or love because of an unshakeable external preoccupation (in The Remains of the Day, it was, in essence, duty and doing what was expected of one; in When We Were Orphans, it's the trauma of the loss of Banks' parents in Shanghai and his obsession with solving cases and detective work). There are hints of the fantastic - of the non-realistic - in When We Were Orphans, by contrast to the thoroughly realistic (if exceedingly mannered) world of the earlier novel, and perhaps it's not coincidental that war is a much more direct presence in this one than in the other. The formality of the tone and structure of the novel is misleading, though at the same time integral - just below the surface is a far more subtle intelligence, exploring the ways in which we are who we are with a clarity and elegance that penetrates deep.