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Monday, January 16, 2006

The Unconsoled

Title: The Unconsoled
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Rating: ****
Description: A pianist arrives in an unknown city somewhere in Europe, where he is plunged into the lives, hopes and adulation of all its residents, while he himself can hardly remember what he is there for.

A dream, a surreal painting of a city, or a psychological glimpse into the subconscious? Ishiguro plays again with the unreliability of memory, the transience of subjective experience, and leaves us frustratingly intrigued without ever revealing the answers. A curious mixture of absurdity, sympathetic portrayals of the strivings of people and their 'trappedness'; a study into unfulfilled ideals, strange hopes, and to use the words of H.D. Thoreau, lives of quiet desperation.

A word to interested readers - don't read the book like you would a mystery thriller. There are no simple resolutions or answers in the strange world Ishiguro describes, right up till the end of the book. Rather, try taking the dissonant scenes to be semi-abstract sketches of the absurdity of life and our attempts fo make sense of it.

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