A Pale View of Hills: Kazuo Ishiguro

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Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami agrees that Ishiguro is admired and widely read in Japan. "Partly it's because they are great books, but also because we find a particular kind of sincere and tender quality in his fiction, which happens to be familiar and natural to us." That said, Murakami doesn't care if Ishiguro is Japanese, English, "or even a Martian author", noting that his depiction of Japanese people and scenery is "slightly different" from the reality, while his "very English" setting of The Remains of the Day is familiar to Japanese readers. "In other words, the place could be anywhere, the character could be anybody and the time could be any time. Everything supposed to be real could be unreal, and vice versa. It is a sensation I love and I only receive it when I read his books." Books: 1982 A Pale View of Hills; '86 An Artist of the Floating World; '89 The Remains of the Day; '95 The Unconsoled; 2000 When We Were Orphans; 2005 Never Let Me Go. The main character of the novel A Pale View of Hills, Etsuko is middle-aged woman from Japan, now living in the English countryside. The novel concerns her daughter Niki (the child of Etsuko’s marriage with Englishman) and her late daughter Keiko (the child of Etsuko’s first marriage with Japanese businessman), who committed suicide. The story of a young woman named Sachiko and her daughter Mariko plays a crucial role in the novel. The present events and memory of the past (while Etsuko lived in Japan) create a tangled web of regret and guilt.

The novel has an eerie atmosphere, ghostly presence is implied, even though never directly presented. The main theme explored is the theme of familial relationships, accent being on the mother-daughter relationship. Update this section! Drowning cats or caring for them, a dilemma for Sachiko at the end of the book, was another scene which was acutely emotionally scarring and carried real emotional weight. Niki’s visit to Etsuko is intertwined with Etsuko’s reminiscence of her life in Japan. While in Nagasaki, Etsuko meets Sachiko and her daughter, who live in the unelectrified cottage near the Etsuko’s apartment. The reader learns that Sachiko’s husband has died in the World War II. Sachiko is proud that she comes from a distinguished family, even though the distinguishedness can be only seen in her old and delicate teapot. The representation of women is not only seen through the patriarchal attitudes of Japanese society but also through societal expectations placed on women. Of these expectations some were discussed earlier in relation to the patriarchal values, such as subservience and obligeance. A Pale View of HIlls suggests that a woman’s identity is her family. The idea of “Ryosai Kenbo”, good wife, wise mother, was expected of women living in Japan leading up to the end of the war. This universal theme of motherhood is depicted in a pale view of hills, however in the form of expectations of Japanese society, and its effects on these women. The woman is older and has memory issues, which she recognizes. But all the memories she retains from her life in Japan revolve around a neighborhood woman friend who also had a young daughter. The main character was pregnant with her first daughter at the time.On the other hand, Etsuko does not want to talk with Niki about Keiko even though, quite ironically, Keiko is their only subject of conversation. At moments, Etsuko feels regret about having to leave Japan and she feels guilty of Keiko’s death. She fancies Keiko’s ghost is still in Keiko’s old bedroom. Clearly, she feels a great amount of regret, but the reader is deprived of the real reason why she feels like that. Only at the end of the novel did Etsuko admit her failings and tells Niki: The theme of memory is one of the recurrent motifs connecting the first three novels by Kazuo Ishiguro. In An Artist of the Floating World, the main character, Masuji Ono uses memory as a powerful device for dissociating himself from the past activities during the World War II. The Remains of the Day concerns Stevens whose memory is a just a screen for his numerous regrets. Sachiko – woman known to Etsuko, and, possibly, a third person on whom Etsuko projects bad memories, thoughts, and events This book was so creepy and confusing that I opted to read it again. Not just because it is short, but because it is well written and it weaves a very intriguing mystery. I thought about this while reading the last part when Mariko asks Etsuko why she is carrying something and she says it was caught in her sandal. I thought "hey, didn't I read this before?" and it's very simmilar to other part earlier in the story. So, could it be that the memories are also disorganised? (like what Julio Cortázar does in "Hopscotch", where one story, when re-arranged makes two different readings).

Etsuko recalls a summer when she was still living in Nagasaki. It was about a decade after the end of World War Two. A widowed single mother named Sachiko—along with her young daughter Mariko—moved in to a cottage near Etsuko’s home. That same summer, Etsuko father-in-law, Ogata, was visiting Etsuko and her husband, Jiro. Etsuko soon befriended Sachiko and Mariko. Etsuko often babysat Mariko, as Sachiko frequently went downtown on dates with an American man named Frank. Frank promised that he would take Sachiko and Mariko to live with him in America. However, his promises seemed increasingly dubious. Historically, I am a big fan of Mr Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day is one of my favourite novels and I admire his straight-forward yet deceptively elusive writing style. Lewis says he has doubts about some of the "mechanical plot elements" of the Whitbread and Booker-shortlisted When We Were Orphans , but sees Ishiguro's work as continuing to reveal itself in the most interesting ways. "It seems to combine features from the earlier books that have been attractive to readers while also attempting to smuggle in those more disturbing and outlandish elements. It is an area he has made entirely his own."Even thought A Pale View of Hills is Ishiguro's debut novel, it shows the masterfulness of his craft in full display. Ishiguro here plays with his common themes of personal and collective memories, trauma and cultural differences between Japan and England. The main character, the first-generation immigrant woman from Japan now living in England, Etsuko, is found in the aftermath of her daughter’s suicide, reminiscent of her life in after-war Nagasaki, the town from which she immigrated with her daughter in a search of a better life. The tale is located in part in Nagasaki at a time when the city is still recovering from the terrible effects of the atomic bombing and in English, a somewhat pale countryside where silence and a slower passage of time prevail. An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale. Ca cititorul sa isi dea seama si mai bine de suferintele japonezilor si de imensa prapastie care s-a cascat intre generatia noua, adepta a noutatilor aduse de americani si cea veche, care incearca sa pastreze valorile si credintele traditionaliste ale Japoniei, autorul il introduce pe Ogata-san, socrul eroinei. Acesta are tot felul de discutii cu fiul lui si nu intelege schimbarile prin care a trecut, considerandu-l nesabuit si lipsit de respect. O scena socanta pentru batran are loc atunci cand doi colegi de-ai fiului sau il viziteaza acasa si ii povestesc despre o cunostinta de-a lor care s-a confruntat cu o problema inedita. Sotia lui refuzase sa voteze cu acelasi partid cu care a votat el, in ciuda faptului ca acesta o batuse. Batranului i se pare inadmisibil ca o femeie sa nu-si urmeze sotul in alegerile lui. During a visit from her daughter, Niki, Etsuko reflects on her own life as a young woman in Japan, and how she left that country to live in England. As she describes it, she and her Japanese husband, Jiro, had a daughter together, and a few years later Etsuko met a British man and moved with him to England. She took her elder daughter, Keiko, to England to live with her and the new husband. When Etsuko and her new husband have a daughter, Etsuko wants to call her something "modern" and her husband wants an Eastern-sounding name, so they compromise with the name "Niki", which seems to Etsuko to be perfectly British, but sounds to her husband at least slightly Japanese. The story starts with Etsuko, a Japanese woman living in England, remembering her life in Japan before and during the pregnancy of her first child. A small part of the book is set in present day England when her younger daughter is around 20yrs old, the rest of the story remembers a different life in Japan, during the 1950s, when life was still very much affected by the bombing of Nagasaki.