The Buried Giant

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

This is my third Ishiguro novel, with The Remains of the Day being my first and favorite, and Never Let Me Go being my second and incredibly lackluster in my opinion. I went into this not really knowing which of the two polarizing opposites I’d land on, but aside from some really poignant and heartwrenching scenes, this landed squarely in the middle for me. I feel like there’s really two separate ideas going on here, and I felt one of the stories was way more compelling/emotional than the other, which really impacted my overall enjoyment.Spoilers follow.The story starts out focusing on Axl and Beatrice, two elderly Britons living within a community they’ve been a part of for as long as they can remember. Unfortunately, their memories don’t go back all that far for mysterious, unclear (in the beginning) reasons. Things that recently happened often go forgotten, and things long in the past may only occasionally be faintly remembered. Despite the persistent memory problems, the two decide that they really need to visit their son in a village several days away, and set out to see him. Along the way they meet up with Edwin, a boy persecuted by his village for superstitious reasons and Wistan, a Saxon warrior who rescues Edwin and takes him under his wing to train him as a warrior. The small group happens along Sir Gawain (King Arthur’s nephew, for those keeping track), on a quest to slay the dragon Querig. Wistan also is there to slay Querig, at the behest of his Saxon king. Querig, as it turns out, is the cause of the widespread memory loss, and Gawain and Wistan find themselves at odds with each other over the slaying of the dragon. The overall feeling of the book was melancholy and kind of dream-like. This wasn’t an easy read by any means, and there’s lots of symbolism, metaphors, and other literary elements to really chew through to get at what the book was trying to convey. I’m not even really sure I understand the significance of some portions, which is fine, I kind of like books that make me think. I will say that I was way more invested in the Axl/Beatrice story, as they struggled with their memory loss, their love for each other, and what is revealed to them about each other as it goes along than I was the Wistan/Gawain story where one wants to slay the dragon and the other wants to protect it. Theirs was a distracting story, and I got bored/impatient with a lot of it. The ending, though, was one heck of a payoff for the journey there. Incredibly emotional.So I guess, 3.5 stars? Maybe? I’ll round it up to 4, just to put it in the middle of my ratings of Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day, but it’s a hard book to get into and not everyone wants that kind of work with their reading. Give it a shot if you’ve read other Ishiguro works, but I’d make it one of your last stops in his catalog.

This book is criminally underrated, it's a complete treasure.

“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.”

This story takes place in ancient England, where a mist keeps people from remembering the past. An elderly couple remembers that they have a son, and they decide to go visit him. Surely he's in a village just a few days away. On the way there, they have some adventures (as you do in a story like this), and there are clues that some of the things that have been forgotten about the past are pretty terrible.

To address a few things I've seen mentioned about this book: yes, the plot is a little slow. I never got bored though, because I was always wondering about the events in the past were being covered up but hinted at.

Yes, the protagonist does call his wife "Princess" constantly. Have you ever been around an old couple? It's meant to show how much he loves her.

Yes, the language in this book is unnatural. You do have characters talking around things and not explaining clearly what they mean. You have enemies calmly talking in an almost friendly way about how they will go about killing each other. This story takes place not long after the time of King Arthur, and the dialog is meant to evoke that chivalrous time.

I really enjoyed this book. It's written beautifully. It's a touching love story, in its own way. It makes you think - is it better to forget about the sins of our past, or to remember them? Is it better to have justice or peace?

Don't read this if you just want a lighthearted adventure, but do read it if you want a beautiful story that will make you think about your life and your relationships.

3.5 stars

The story that happens somewhere in England during the Iron Age. The legendary King Arthur, the war leader that defeated the Saxons, is long dead. Britons and Saxons live together in peace for about a generation, in a land of dragons and ogres and elves and pixies, forgetful of the violence and the slaughter of the war.

But then something happens, and all hell breaks loose.

The Buried Giant is not a historical novel, and it’s not exactly a fantasy one. The story takes place in a pre-scientific, superstitious era where people believed that there were strange forces around, such as pixies which are associated with illness and death. It was a way to explain phenomena that could not otherwise be explained and Ishiguro quite dexterously incorporated these forces in the background of his novel.

The Buried Giant is a story of love and societal loss of memory. It could take place in any era. Even during our time, there have been terrible conflicts, based on hatred, Rwanda genocide and the most persecuted minority in the world, the Rohingya people in Myanmar, are two recent examples. People of different ethnic backgrounds lived together for one or two generations, and then there was an event, something that stirred things up and these same people who didn’t previously hate each other, suddenly remember that they are supposed to hate each other. “The battle over how a nation remembers is really a battle over what this nation is going to do next,” says Kazuo Ishiguro.

At the heart of the novel there is an elderly couple who also suffer of memory loss. Occasionally, fragments of memory penetrate the strange mist that deliberately make the people forgetful and they remember that once they had a son, long gone now. They embark on a journey to find him. During this long journey, they are thinking about their life together and they are concerned that their shared memories are gone. What could happen to their love if they cannot remember the years of their marriage? And if they actually remember the dark moments of their long relationship, could then their love survive?

It’s a question that all that have found themselves in a long relationship must have asked at some point, whether this is about a relationship with a partner, or parents or siblings. Sometimes is just better to forget, I think. “Forgetting is as integral to memory as death is to life, ” says Rabih Alameddine in The Angel of History. Unless we deal with or bury painful things, it’s difficult to move forward. Sometimes, we just need to draw a line and look into the future, or else everything is going to end in disintegration and hatred.

On the surface the story seems simple enough: in medieval England, plagued by a magic that causes everyone to forget the things that happened in the recent and distant past, an old couple decides to travel to a nearby village to visit their son whom they haven't seen in a very long time. However, this being Kazuo Ishiguro, there's so much more to what's really going on.

Much of the story's mystery stems, not from why they can't remember, but from what it actually is they have forgotten. Slowly, as the story progresses, we are given pieces of the couple's, as well as the country's, past. Along the way, they meet up with several other characters who also have a role to play in this forgetfulness and in trying to find a way to undo it.

While there are dragons, ogres, pixies, magic, and a devil dog, this is not a traditional Fantasy novel. Interestingly, though, I think people who either like or dislike Fantasy can still enjoy it for what it is. The message is very relevant to the history of humanity over the centuries, but it's also particularly timely for our age. (And that's all I'm going to say, because even a hint of what it's about would ruin the effect of the story.)

The writing itself is very gentle--perhaps a bit too gentle considering they are on an adventure of sorts. While the setting lacks much in the way of description, the characters of the old couple are definitely the highlight of the novel next to its message. I can't stress enough how excellent the relationship is between this wonderfully written old couple. Never is the story or writing more tender than when it is sharing a conversation between the two of them.

And, yet, I give it only three stars. That's because, even though the novel starts and finishes strongly, there's a part in the middle that just seems out of place. For a stretch of the novel, it was as if Ishiguro himself suffered from the same plague of forgetfulness as to why he was writing the novel and just had the characters do things. Gone was the loaded narrative that had previously let us know this story was about more than just an old couple and a land that forgets. It just felt so empty and out of place that it completely ruined the flow of the story.

I don't want to discourage anyone from reading this novel. I gave a similar rating to Never Let Me Go, for a completely different reason, yet I wouldn't hesitate for a moment to call it brilliant. This one is, too, but it is a slight step down from that one. And both pale when compared to The Remains of the Day, which is about as perfect as any novel can hope to get.