New Fiction
Atlantic, The, May, 2005 by Joseph O'Neill
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Whatever surnominal adjective Kazuo Ishiguro finally bequeaths us (Ishiguronian? Ishiguronic?), its meaning is surely settled: suggestive of an emotionally hampered, stuffily self-expressive individual—a Japanese from the imperial days, say, or a butler, or a buttoned-up British private detective—who unreliably surveys his or her personal past to tragic effect.
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Peeping through the lowered venetians of yesteryear (recollection as a species of voyeurism is very Ishiguro), the retrovert is privy to a series of partial visions that eventually reveal a life guided by calamitous misapprehension on his part. True, Ishiguro's fourth novel, The Unconsoled , gleefully dynamited this formula; but his fifth, When We Were Orphans , saw a return to familiar methods and preoccupations—in particular the perilous importance of nostalgia, and the loss of childhood's blissful expectancy and ignorance. As Schopenhauer put it, "In our early youth we sit before the life that lies ahead of us like children sitting before ...
