The Unconsoled

Rating:
Summary: Fiction on a time-delay fuse
Review: On first read, The Unconsoled leaves the reader feeling either quite angry at the author or very sorry for himself. For me it did both. I couldn't believe I had put in the time to read a book of such length and fraught with such nonsensical characters and so little touch with reality. It felt like somebody's nightmare. And, you know what? It was.

For some obscure reason, I finished the book, although I usually give the author fifty pages to drag me in, and shelve his work if he fails the test. Having read other titles by Ishiguro, or hoping for a miracle, I read on. And on. After it was over, I felt I was coming round after a long stretch in surgery: the symptoms were all there, even the horrible feeling you get in the nether regions when anaesthesia is wearing off. I kept the book as a memento of what I'd been through, even though I do admit I had the urge to fling into the trashcan. I am glad I didn't.

Years later, I find myself facing the same sort of perverted reality that Ryder dwells in, albeit at times only (thankfully). There's not much I can say, other than that I read the book only once, eight years ago, and it's been a year since I came to even like it. It IS an extraordinary novel, despite being a long, unpleasant, gruelling read. I feel glad I've read it, and not because I had the patience (resolve? obstinacy?) to stay the course and finish it.

It is a bit demanding to ask so much of a reader, though, in terms of time and effort. Hence the 3 stars.

Read the book. Then wait until it kicks in.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointment
Review: Remains of the Day was one of the best books I ever read. This was one of the worst books I ever read. It seems like Ishiguro was trying to do something artsy and creative and instead crafted something annoying and frustrating. It is a long book that goes no where in particular doing little of any interest in between. I should have read Remains of the Day two more times instead.

Rating:
Summary: INFURIATING!
Review: The Unconsoled must be one of the most frustrating novels I have ever read.

The entire narrative is presented as an uncomfortable dream, and the author gives us no solid ground from where we can interpret this dream record.

Are we supposed to take the dream sequences and events, and make some kind of Freudian analysis of them? This would, however, seem pointless as we are given no idea of, no chance to develop sympathy with the main character, since he always remains this elusive, confused man with no real relationships, no locality and no reliable memories.

Perhaps this portrayl of confused reality and general personal anasthesia is the whole point of Ishiguro's novel. Perhaps he is saying that the world is full of pepole who are frustrated, who carry burdensome and unrealistic expectaions of themselves and others, who are just too busy or emotionallly stuck to relate to others - and that all this amounts to a world which has exactly the quality of a panic dream.

Maybe also Ishiguro was consciosly writing a fin de siecle book - saying that reality has become explicable in the terms developed by Freud at the beginning of the century, and developed endlessly throughout the remainder of it. Perhaps this is a book with which to conclude the therapy-obsessed twentieth century.

Perhaps another aspect of interpreting this book as a response to epochal ideas is that the author is responding to the notion that has developed in the later part of the twentith century, that just what reality is, is not all that clear. Will technology soon anable us to produce replicants that are indistinguishable from "real" people? Will we be able to fabricate organic compounds, living organisms, worlds, universes exactly the same as the original models?

The Unconsoled might be putting the question - Is the action we witness and take part in in our dreams any less real than what we experience in our waking hours?

If you are out there, Kazuo - was any of this in your mind as you subjected yourself to what must have been the strict discilpline of writing this book?

While the book uses a sense of time which is disjointed, as time can be in a dream, the narrative does follow an orderly, cause and event sequence. This seems to contradict the dream ambience, but I wonder whether the sequential narrative is in fact a smokescreen. I began to get a nagging sense that the characters were perhaps merging and blurred as individuals. In particular, I began to suspect that many of the characters were Ryder, portrayed at different times in his life.

For example, Boris is perhaps Ryder as a boy, experiencing some inadequate parenting. Is Stephan Hoffman Ryder later on, terrified of his parents opinion - or wether they will even bother to turn up at his performance. Is Brodsky Ryder when his career is washed up?

Clearly, if the individual's outlines are blurred to this extent, then the apparently orderly passage of time in the narrative is an illsion.

This idea of the loss of clear definition of personal boundaries is possibly a theme in itself.

Perhaps a family, a community, a whole city can be "read" in the same way as an individual, using the same sought of psychological concepts. There are groups of people in this novel who are uncommonly united in their views. The porters' group and the various groupings of prominent citizens, project a sense of concern about their corporate position, they approach Ryder in an obsequious manner, they go through violent mood swings - all in a manner of behaviour that we would normally expect from an single person. Is this perhaps a variation on the (Jungian) notion of the collective unconscioius? Do we share dreams - incuding bad ones -, is there a psychic continuum between actually separate people,and between the different people we individually are at different times in our lives, that leaves us far less personally distinct than we are used to thinking?

This book made me furious while I was reading it, but I couldn't not finish it. In retrospect, it threw up many fascinating questions, some of which I have attempted to express above. My last question - Does anyone have any answers?