Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | FICTION ISH | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | FICTION ISH | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
The Unconsoled is at once a gripping psychological mystery, a wicked satire of the cult of art, and a poignant character study of a man whose public life has accelerated beyond his control. The setting is a nameless Central European city where Ryder, a renowned pianist, has come to give the most important performance of his life. Instead, he finds himself diverted on a series of cryptic and infuriating errands that nevertheless provide him with vital clues to his own past. In The Unconsoled Ishiguro creates a work that is itself a virtuoso performance, strange, haunting, and resonant with humanity and wit.
A work of great interest and originality.... Ishiguro has mapped out an aesthetic territory that is all his own...frankly fantastic and] fiercer and funnier than before.-- The New Yorker
Author Notes
Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan on November 8, 1954. In 1960, his family moved to England. He received a bachelor's degree in English and philosophy from the University of Kent in 1978 and a master's degree in creative writing from the University of East Anglia in 1980. He became a British citizen in 1982.
His first novel, A Pale View of Hills, received the Winifred Holtby Award from the Royal Society of Literature. His second novel, An Artist of the Floating World, received the Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 1986. His third novel, The Remains of the Day, received the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1989 and was adapted into a film starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. His other works include The Unconsoled, When We Were Orphans, Never Let Me Go, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, and The Buried Giant. He was awarded the OBE in 1995 for services to literature and the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 1998. He received the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature. He has also written several songs for jazz singer Stacey Kent and screenplays for both film and television.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
With this stunning new novel, cast in the form of a postmodern nightmare, Ishiguro tells a powerful story in which he once again exploits a narrator's utter lack of self-knowledge to create a devastating deadpan irony. A celebrated concert pianist identified only as Mr Ryder arrives at an unnamed European (seemingly Germanic) city not only to give a concert but also, it seems, to address the townspeople and help them surmount a communal sense of crisis that stems from the city's inability to nurture a musical artist of outstanding creative talent. Strangely, the economic, social and psychic health of the community depends on its regaining its self-image in the wake of a dreadful past mistake, when the city fathers lionized a musician with the ``wrong'' artistic values. Ryder intuits this situation gradually, for he is curiously disoriented; he can't really remember what he's supposed to be doing there. In fact, through Ryder's confused perceptions, the reader is immediately plunged into a surrealistic landscape that has the eerie unpredictability, claustrophobic atmosphere and strange time sequences of a dream. Everyone in this town presents a false image to the world. Each person Ryder meets addresses him with fawning obsequiousness and asks him for a small favor which turns out to be an egregious intrusion into his time. Yet Ryder, infused with an inflated sense of mission, feels a need to console them: ``People need me. I arrive in a place and find terrible problems, and people are so grateful I've come.'' Although he initially thinks he's a stranger in the city, it slowly becomes obvious that he's been here before. In fact, he has been the lover of a woman called Sophie whose little boy, Boris, in many ways replays the pivotal events of Ryder's own life. With dream logic, many of Ryder's childhood friends from England turn up in this inhospitable place, and it becomes obvious that most events are replicas of ones that have occurred before or that fulfill Ryder's fears about the future. As in Ishiguro's previous books (The Remains of the Day, etc.), almost every turn of the plot concerns a failure of communication and a stifling of emotional responses. Children are profoundly wounded by their self-absorbed and insensitive parents; lovers alienate each other across an emotional abyss. The culture-obsessed inhabitants of the city don't recognize true talent when it appears; they disapprove of creativity when it doesn't fit their expectations. Sustaining the nightmarish atmosphere of this taleits tone alternately sinister and farcicalfor more than 500 pages is a tricky business, especially since all the characters express themselves in long, dense monologues. Yet, so adroit is Ishiguro in maintaining suspense that one is as ensnared in the nightmare as is Ryder. The story seems to be a journey through life: its purpose never entirely clear, its events capricious and inexplicable, its destination undoubtedly ``the vast, dark, empty space'' of the soul's extinction. 75,000 first printing; BOMC and QPB selections. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
A surrealistic atmosphere envelops the latest novel by the author of the much-acclaimed Remains of the Day (1989). Kafkaesque in its disjointed reality and in its dark Eastern European ambience, Ishiguro's new work attempts to disorient readers by confusing them as to what's taking place. Those who persist in holding on to this bucking bronco of a story will endure a series of twists and turns that lead down the byways of an unnamed city where Ryder, a world-renowned pianist, has come to present a major concert. Upon his arrival, Ryder seems to be awakening from a dream; he remembers little of where this place is and how he comes to be here. As a Twilight Zone feeling develops, Ryder becomes embroiled in other people's tangled personal lives. He seems to know things about people he's never met before--or has he?--and they know things about him. Yet he decides at the conclusion of this peculiar visit that "whatever disappointments this city had brought, there was no doubting that my presence had been greatly appreciated--just as it had been everywhere else I had ever gone." An intriguing if perplexing tale for serious fiction readers. Expect demand where Ishiguro has a following. (Reviewed August 1995)0679404252Brad Hooper
Kirkus Review
The mixed blessings of celebrity and the estrangement from "normal life" of those who live for art are given haunting emotional and symbolic dimension: an imaginatively conceived and executed novel by the author of The Remains of the Day (1989), etc. The spirit and example of Kafka seem to hover over Ishiguro's mysteriously exfoliating plot, in which a celebrated concert pianist named Ryder finds warm welcome--and much more--in an unfamiliar (and unnamed) European city where, it seems, he has promised to perform a recital. Ryder is eagerly, even obsequiously greeted by a parade of strangers who nevertheless subject him to elaborate disquisitions about crises in their lives to which they beg him to devote attention. "Much was expected of me," Ryder repeatedly muses as one distraction follows another. Gustav, the elderly hotel porter, begs the influential celebrity to speak on behalf of him and his co-workers, and Ryder is persuaded to meet briefly with Gustav's troubled daughter and her small son. The hotel manager asks Ryder's advice for his son, a hopeful pianist of no particular talent. Orchestra conductor Brodsky, a drunken has-been mourning the death of his beloved dog, becomes another burden Ryder finds he cannot shirk...and on it goes. Gradually, Ryder experiences momentary memory flashes during which he realizes he does know things about these people, not excluding their most intimate thoughts. Are they relations and acquaintances whose closeness to him he's forgotten or repressed? Or people whose lives only coincidentally impinge on and resemble his own (a general truth he may have neglected to absorb)? Both possibilities are juggled expertly throughout this long, complex, though never tedious book's ingenious development. Elegantly written, mischievously funny, teasingly provocative, and enigmatic: Ishiguro's challenging portrayal of the isolated artistic temperament simultaneously reveals its naked contingent humanity. A brilliant novel that will almost certainly be remembered as one of the best of the decade. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
As stylistically distinctive as his acclaimed The Remains of the Day (LJ 10/1/89), Ishiguro's newest work offers a different kind of protagonist. While Remains's butler was at odds with himself (without knowing it), prominent concert pianist Ryder is at odds with his surroundings. Ryder arrives in an unidentified European city at a bit of a loss. Everyone he meets seems to assume that he knows more than he knows, that he is well acquainted with the city and its obscure cultural crisis. A young woman he kindly consents to advise seems to have been an old lover and her son quite possibly his own; he vaguely recalls past conversations. The world he has entered is a surreal, Alice-in-Wonderland place where a door in a cafe can lead back to a hotel miles away. The result is at once dreamy, disorienting, and absolutely compelling; Ishiguro's paragraphs, though Proust-like, are completely lucid and quite addictive to read. Some readers may find that the whole concept grinds too much against logic, but the pleasure here is that Ishiguro doesn't do anything so ordinary as trying to resolve events neatly, instead taking them at face value. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/95.]-Barbara Hoffert, ``Library Journal'' (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
1 The taxi driver seemed embarrassed to find there was no one-not even a clerk behind the reception desk-waiting to welcome me. He wandered across the deserted lobby, perhaps hoping to discover a staff member concealed behind one of the plants or armchairs. Eventually he put my suitcases down beside the elevator doors and, mumbling some excuse, took his leave of me. The lobby was reasonably spacious, allowing several coffee tables to be spread around it with no sense of crowding. But the ceiling was low and had a definite sag, creating a slightly claustrophobic mood, and despite the sunshine outside the light was gloomy. Only near the reception desk was there a bright streak of sun on the wall, illuminating an area of dark wood panelling and a rack of magazines in German, French and English. I could see also a small silver bell on the reception desk and was about to go over to shake it when a door opened somewhere behind me and a young man in uniform appeared. 'Good afternoon, sir,' he said tiredly and, going behind the reception desk, began the registration procedures. Although he did mumble an apology for his absence, his manner remained for a time distinctly off-hand. As soon as I mentioned my name, however, he gave a start and straightened himself. 'Mr Ryder, I'm so sorry I didn't recognise you. Mr Hoffman, the manager, he was very much wanting to welcome you personally. But just now, unfortunately, he's had to go to an important meeting.' 'That's perfectly all right. I'll look forward to meeting him later on.' The desk clerk hurried on through the registration forms, all the while muttering about how annoyed the manager would be to have missed my arrival. He twice mentioned how the preparations for 'Thursday night' were putting the latter under unusual pressure, keeping him away from the hotel far more than was usual. I simply nodded, unable to summon the energy to enquire into the precise nature of 'Thursday night'. 'Oh, and Mr Brodsky's been doing splendidly today,' the desk clerk said, brightening. 'Really splendidly. This morning he rehearsed that orchestra for four hours non-stop. And listen to him now! Still hard at it, working things out by himself.' He indicated the rear of the lobby. Only then did I become aware that a piano was being played somewhere in the building, just audible above the muffled noise of the traffic outside. I raised my head and listened more closely. Someone was playing a single short phrase-it was from the second movement of Mullery's Verticality-over and over in a slow, preoccupied manner. 'Of course, if the manager were here,' the desk clerk was saying, 'he might well have brought Mr Brodsky out to meet you. But I'm not sure . . .' He gave a laugh. 'I'm not sure if I should disturb him. You see, if he's deep in concentration . . .' 'Of course, of course. Another time.' 'If the manager were here . . .' He trailed off and laughed again. Then leaning forward, he said in a low voice: 'Do you know, sir, some guests have had the nerve to complain? About our closing off the drawing room like this each time Mr Brodsky requires the piano? It's amazing how some people think! Two different guests actually complained to Mr Hoffman yesterday You can be sure, they were very quickly put in their place.' 'I'm sure they were. Brodsky, you say.' I thought about the name, but it meant nothing to me. Then I caught the desk clerk watching me with a puzzled look and said quickly: 'Yes, yes. I'll look forward to meeting Mr Brodsky in good time.' 'If only the manager were here, sir.' 'Please don't worry. Now if that's all, I'd very much appreciate . . .' 'Of course, sir. You must be very tired after such a long journey. Here's your key. Gustav over there will show you to your room.' I looked behind me and saw that an elderly porter was waiting across the lobby. He was standing in front of the open eleva Excerpted from The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
