THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510270733
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY RENEE ELLEN OLANDER
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
THE UNCONSOLED
KAZUO ISHIGURO
Alfred A. Knopf. 535 pp. $25.
The Unconsoled. What kind of title is that? I stared at the cover for weeks without opening it: The Uncomforted. Given late 20th century global village living, hectic and disorienting as it can be, one might not burn to read about the unconsoled, even if the writer is the brilliant Kazuo Ishiguro, author of three novels, including The Remains of the Day (also a great film featuring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson).
Once opened, The Unconsoled turns out to be a curious journey into a version of contemporary life rife with beepers, traffic, tight schedules, strained family relations, miscommunications, corridors, coldness, simmering angers and alcoholism. What kept me from being unconsoled is the oddly comic quality of the whole development - it's surreal, farfetched, Kafka-esque; it's compellingly frustrating and funny.
A guy named Ryder tells the story, and he isn't entirely reliable. He's an outsider, a famous musician visiting ``just another cold, lonely city,'' for a big performance. But the city (whose mayor is Mr. Winterstein) turns out to be the place where Ryder lives with his wife and son.
In the hotel lobby, Ryder meets Gustav, an old porter, who tells him about the porters' movement, and how they don't get enough respect. Gustav hasn't spoken to his daughter Sophie in years; he asks Ryder to speak to her for him. Ryder agrees, and when he arrives at the appointed cafe, he slowly recognizes that Sophie is his wife, Boris his young son. It's as if he'd just forgotten.
Ryder sets out home with Sophie and Boris for a family dinner, but along the way, Ryder loses Sophie - the first of many times Ryder gets lost or sidetracked.
During his stay in the city, all sorts of people - the porters, the hotel manager, old school friends, the Citizens Mutual Support Group, old lovers in argument - continually make demands on his time and judgment, as if his musical achievement made him a universal expert, specializing in longstanding conflicts. Everyone wants to appropriate the artist for a cause.
And Ryder mostly disappoints. He misses appointments and chances. He appears at a banquet in a dressing gown, and then accidentally exposes himself. He's repeatedly awakened by ringing telephones. He complains of people needing him. His ambition drives him to meet their demands, yet along the way, he repeatedly ignores or abandons his son, and he blames Sophie for the chaos of his life.
Around him swirls a full cast of oddly familiar characters, recognizable in our families, workplaces and community leadership. Everybody seems to have an agenda.
And Ryder encounters strange scenes, for instance, a roadside amputation of an artificial leg - and he's mostly unfazed by his experience.
In direct and flawless prose, Ishiguro offers up a central character clueless about his own comedy and unconscious of how others perceive him. The Unconsoled makes wry commentary on relationships, politics, art and the crazed pace of life so many of us keep. In content, it offers little consolation, but it's beautifully, and amusingly, crafted - and hence an unusual reading pleasure.
- MEMO: Renee Ellen Olander is a poet who teaches literature at Old Dominion
University. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Londoner Kazuo Ishiguro offers a wry look at relationships,
politics, art and the crazed pace of the lives we lead.
by CNB