The Buried Giant is Kazuo Ishiguro's seventh novel, and his latest in a decade. Set in the disquieting period of truce between Britons and Saxons in post-Arthurian England, it follows the journey of an elderly couple, Beatrice and Axl. The two are beset by the same uncanny forgetfulness that seems to afflict everyone in the land, causing them to forget things in the deep, as well as recent, past.
The duo set out into a treacherous landscape, inhabited by ogres, pixies, and the fearsome she-dragon Querig, in order to seek their long lost son. En route, they encounter Wistan, a Saxon warrior on a mission, Edwin, a boy ostracised by his community, and an elderly Sir Gawain.
Genre-bender
Much has been made of the use of fantasy in the book. As with Never Let Me Go, readers of the hugely successful British novelist have had a mixed reaction to his bending of genre. Ishiguro himself has pointed out that writers today travel across genres more than ever before, while simultaneously betraying his insecurity over turning off some readers with what he calls “surface elements”, or mere devices used to make his larger thematic points.
In a now infamous interview, Ishiguro exclaimed, “Are they going to think this is fantasy?” Champions of genre, most notably the grand dame of science fiction, Ursula Le Guin, have taken issue with this statement, which he has since clarified.
A reading of the novel confirms what both Ishiguro and Le Guin are saying. The novel is fantasy, but is also a disservice to fantasy, because its fantastic elements are used with too much of a light touch to ever make the story or the characters entirely believable. Ishiguro wants to make his thematic concerns so central that he almost seems to forget to tell the story well in the process.
Always a new novel
In his review of The Buried Giant, Neil Gaiman says that Ishiguro never writes the same novel twice. In a sense, this is true. In over three decades of writing, Ishiguro has dealt with a vast variety of settings and characters, from the Japanese daughter in his debut novel, the bereft painter in the surrealist The Unconsoled, and the English butler in The Remains of the Day.
But Ishiguro isn't changing his questions about love, memory, conflict, and loss – he's merely finding new scenarios in which to ask them, of new people. At the most, what he's doing in The Buried Giant with those same questions that have preoccupied him throughout his writing career, is changing their scope, and their setting. None of this is atypical of Ishiguro, and even his experimentation with genre, if that is what one wants to call it, is not happening for the first time.
A bad day at the office
What is new and surprising about The Buried Giant is that the prodigiously talented author is having, so to speak, an off day. The foremost problem is that of world-building. Great fantasy is, above all, relatable, no matter how richly imaginative or even outlandish – and this just does not happen in The Buried Giant.
The characters that otherwise come alive, complex and rich figures, in Ishiguro's historical fiction seem so encumbered by the mythological setting that they are never fully realised. This is unfortunate because much of the forward motion in an otherwise slow pace is dependent on dialogue.
Disconcertingly quickly, Axl and Beatrice's endearments start to grate on one's nerves. Sir Gawain remains vaguely comical and pathetic until the end. It's all done within a terribly polite honour code, which flattens even the most turbulent parts. The enigmatic style that could have worked very well for a fable, written in a few pages, falters because of the length and ambition of the novel. The story is bookended by the promise of terrible violence, and almost explodes with it, but never does, remaining mostly in the island of uneasy anticipation.
The story, and its telling, definitely become more effective as the novel progresses. Part of it is the natural unfurling of tension because the mystery of suppressed memory is finally lifted in the final chapters. And part of it is the recognition of what Ishiguro was trying – daring – to do, in using a deeply allusive scenario to ask very difficult and uncomfortable questions about violence, conflict, and enmity. Because of this reason, even in the many ways it fails, the effort is spectacular.
But this is certainly not Ishiguro's best or most memorable work. With the rest of his oeuvre he has left us in no doubt that he is a master of his craft, and The Buried Giant disappoints precisely because of this knowledge. Ultimately, one must concur with Ursula Le Guin and Neil Gaiman: this is work that one can respect, but not love.
The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro, Faber and Faber.
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The duo set out into a treacherous landscape, inhabited by ogres, pixies, and the fearsome she-dragon Querig, in order to seek their long lost son. En route, they encounter Wistan, a Saxon warrior on a mission, Edwin, a boy ostracised by his community, and an elderly Sir Gawain.
Genre-bender
Much has been made of the use of fantasy in the book. As with Never Let Me Go, readers of the hugely successful British novelist have had a mixed reaction to his bending of genre. Ishiguro himself has pointed out that writers today travel across genres more than ever before, while simultaneously betraying his insecurity over turning off some readers with what he calls “surface elements”, or mere devices used to make his larger thematic points.
In a now infamous interview, Ishiguro exclaimed, “Are they going to think this is fantasy?” Champions of genre, most notably the grand dame of science fiction, Ursula Le Guin, have taken issue with this statement, which he has since clarified.
A reading of the novel confirms what both Ishiguro and Le Guin are saying. The novel is fantasy, but is also a disservice to fantasy, because its fantastic elements are used with too much of a light touch to ever make the story or the characters entirely believable. Ishiguro wants to make his thematic concerns so central that he almost seems to forget to tell the story well in the process.
Always a new novel
In his review of The Buried Giant, Neil Gaiman says that Ishiguro never writes the same novel twice. In a sense, this is true. In over three decades of writing, Ishiguro has dealt with a vast variety of settings and characters, from the Japanese daughter in his debut novel, the bereft painter in the surrealist The Unconsoled, and the English butler in The Remains of the Day.
But Ishiguro isn't changing his questions about love, memory, conflict, and loss – he's merely finding new scenarios in which to ask them, of new people. At the most, what he's doing in The Buried Giant with those same questions that have preoccupied him throughout his writing career, is changing their scope, and their setting. None of this is atypical of Ishiguro, and even his experimentation with genre, if that is what one wants to call it, is not happening for the first time.
A bad day at the office
What is new and surprising about The Buried Giant is that the prodigiously talented author is having, so to speak, an off day. The foremost problem is that of world-building. Great fantasy is, above all, relatable, no matter how richly imaginative or even outlandish – and this just does not happen in The Buried Giant.
The characters that otherwise come alive, complex and rich figures, in Ishiguro's historical fiction seem so encumbered by the mythological setting that they are never fully realised. This is unfortunate because much of the forward motion in an otherwise slow pace is dependent on dialogue.
Disconcertingly quickly, Axl and Beatrice's endearments start to grate on one's nerves. Sir Gawain remains vaguely comical and pathetic until the end. It's all done within a terribly polite honour code, which flattens even the most turbulent parts. The enigmatic style that could have worked very well for a fable, written in a few pages, falters because of the length and ambition of the novel. The story is bookended by the promise of terrible violence, and almost explodes with it, but never does, remaining mostly in the island of uneasy anticipation.
The story, and its telling, definitely become more effective as the novel progresses. Part of it is the natural unfurling of tension because the mystery of suppressed memory is finally lifted in the final chapters. And part of it is the recognition of what Ishiguro was trying – daring – to do, in using a deeply allusive scenario to ask very difficult and uncomfortable questions about violence, conflict, and enmity. Because of this reason, even in the many ways it fails, the effort is spectacular.
But this is certainly not Ishiguro's best or most memorable work. With the rest of his oeuvre he has left us in no doubt that he is a master of his craft, and The Buried Giant disappoints precisely because of this knowledge. Ultimately, one must concur with Ursula Le Guin and Neil Gaiman: this is work that one can respect, but not love.
The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro, Faber and Faber.