Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61195 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-03
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Synopsis
Ryder, a renowned pianist, arrives in a Central European city he cannot identify for a concert he cannot remember agreeing to give. But then as he traverses a landscape by turns eerie and comical - and always strangely malleable, as a dream might be - he comes steadily to realise he is facing the most crucial performance of his life. Ishiguro's extraordinary study of a man whose life has accelerated beyond his control was met on publication by consternation, vilification - and the highest praise.

Customer Reviews

Frustration as art
The most annoying book I've ever read, like Kafka writing a soap opera with all of the good bits taken out.

If getting bounced from storyline to storyline, not making any progress at anything, and the most drawn out, pointless wind up style is so great, then my local town hall should surely get the Nobel Prize.

somewhat puerile postmodernist lit - not my preference
A previous reviewer who likens experiencing the shifting, distorted context for this novel to that often depicted by Dali fails to take into account the fundamental difference between these two experiences as temporal phenomena; where we can chart our own course through the visual, bowing out the very moment we feel the need to return to the comfort of observable reality, the novel leads us at the author's pace through a series of disconcerting scenarios. This is at once its strength and weakness; with every page I dared myself to take just another few paragraphs of the meandering, disquieting saga narrated by the self-absorbed and entirely unsympathetic protagonist, but having just completed the 253rd of 535 pages I have decided that enough is enough - I get it, the postmodern world is one of disillusion, confusion and ambiguity. Reading the reviews of others has confirmed what I suspected might be the case: that the ending brings no more enlightenment than the implication that I myself am an actor in such a world - that we are all "the unconsoled". On balance I appreciate the novel as quintessential postmodernist literature, but that is all - its progress from one living nightmare-like cliché to the next (the inability to speak when required to do so, the appearance of acquaintances from incongruous times and places, the loss of the use of one's legs when being chased, etc) is ultimately too wearing and too obvious for me to recommend it without the above disclaimer. If you're considering an Ishiguro I would wholeheartedly recommend `The Remains of the Day' instead - a subtle, lovely, atmospheric alternative with all of the reward and none of the frustration.

I felt unconsoled...
Meandering...confusing...depressing...Not a patch on "The Remains of the Day".

This book wanders around in slow, dull manner. I often enjoy books where "nothing ever happens" and it is clear that this author is a skilled writer. I just wish he had chosen not to write this book.