When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was my second time through When We Were Orphans and I needed reminding of how effortlessly Ishiguro can frustrate the expectations of his readers. Sweeping from Shanghai to England and then back to Shanghai, we follow the eminent English detective Christopher Banks as he attempts to uncover the mystery of his parents’ long-ago kidnapping and reunite with them. Along the way we’re introduced to Akira, his boyhood friend in Shanghai’s International Settlement, and Sarah, the woman he protests too much not to be fascinated by. Only loosely a detective story, and partly because Ishiguro’s fascination is less with the crime and more with the stories that Banks tells and retells himself as he narrates his own childhood. The mystery, perhaps, is how Banks has avoided the truth all these years. And though we eventually learn of one crime, the criminal is more an apparition than a person. The corruptibility of memory seems like the true culprit.
It’s not my favorite Ishiguro novel, but I do love the section where Banks travels through the war-torn neighborhood of Shanghai as he tries to reach the house in which he believes his parents are still being held. Everything about this is maddening and masterful—the gossamer-thin clue that Banks relies on, the dreamlike way he moves through the battlefront oblivious of the danger around him, and the long refusal to face the truth of what happened to his parents. It feels like a hint of things to come in The Unconsoled.