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Kazuo Ishiguro

The Unconsoled Paperback – February 28, 2005

by Kazuo Ishiguro (Author)

370 ratings

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Ryder, a renowned pianist, arrives in a Central European city he cannot identify for a concert he cannot remember agreeing to give. But then as he traverses a landscape by turns eerie and comical - and always strangely malleable, as a dream might be - he comes steadily to realise he is facing the most crucial performance of his life. Ishiguro's extraordinary study of a man whose life has accelerated beyond his control was met on publication by consternation, vilification - and the highest praise.

Print length

544 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Gardners Books
Publication date

February 28, 2005
Dimensions

4.96 x 1.14 x 7.8 inches
ISBN-10

057122539X
ISBN-13

978-0571225392
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Product details

Publisher : Gardners Books; First Edition (February 28, 2005)
Language : English
Paperback : 544 pages
ISBN-10 : 057122539X
ISBN-13 : 978-0571225392
Item Weight : 12 ounces
Dimensions : 4.96 x 1.14 x 7.8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #8,021,801 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #149,921 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #279,975 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
370 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		51%
4 star		14%
3 star		11%
2 star		13%
1 star		11%

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Top reviews from the United States

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RyonAmazon37

An Exercise in Frustration

Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2020

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I love a number of Ishiguro's other works (The Buried Giant and Never Let Me Go might make a list of my ten all-time favorite novels) and generally consider him one of my favorite authors (alongside Gene Wolfe and George Saunders), but The Unconsoled is a repetitive exercise in frustration which, even if that is part of the point, does not feel worth completing.

Initially, the narrator's experiences being taken off course by people he meets and discovering (sometimes to his own surprise) the deep connections he already has with characters he's seemingly encountering for the first time are intriguing and dreamlike, and there are shades of Kafka in the way people and events conspire to make enacting even his simplest desires impossible. But the same kinds of situations and exchanges repeat themselves over and over, exhausting the concept and Ishiguro's execution of it long before the novel reaches the halfway point.

Reading a scene in which the protagonist finds himself unable to speak just when he's required to identify himself to save another character from horrible humiliation, I wanted to throw the book in frustration. Were this a short story or novella or had Ishiguro varied these dynamics so it was not merely the same structure over and over, this could be quite impactful, but stretched out at such great length (500+ pages) and in such a repetitive way, the novel is tedious and unsatisfying.

Usually, Ishiguro is able to create sharp irony and/or deep emotion out of his characters' confusion about their own lives and circumstances. They may not grasp (or admit) their errors, or the cruelty of their world, but we can understand, relate, and see what was lost or missed. The Unconsoled is almost the opposite: what is often only mildly frustrating for the narrator is tedious punishment for the reader.

Oddly, given the novel is more like a dream than reality, it somehow becomes the one thing dreams almost never are--utterly predictable.

8 people found this helpful

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Teresa

Dysfunctional

Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2016

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This is a very hard read, long, eerie, with no concrete plot, disturbing, off-putting at times. I have read a few other Ishiguro's books and have always been highly impressed with his writing, so I kept reading in the hope that something will actually happen, that things that sounded simply absurd would suddenly make sense, that open questions would be answered. I thought that maybe there would be a "Never let me go" kind of "twist"...? But no: it took me to the end of the book to realize this is what this book is all about, exploiting the absurd. Once I accepted it, I found the whole thing brilliant - but what a fight it was!

26 people found this helpful

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Marius Gabriel

A nightmarish, brilliant novel that defies analysis. A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2014

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Nearly 20 years after its first publication, this book continues to infuriate, mystify and beguile readers. Some claim to have explained it, and to have found out what it is all about. I am not one of them. Others have described it as utterly unintelligible. I am not one of those, either.

I do, however, immensely admire Ishiguro as a writer with a singular brilliance at capturing the enigmatic. In that, he can be compared to the greatest writers in English. He does not write novels which have easy explanations. Rather, he addresses the aspects of life that can't be explained.

"The Unconsoled" does have a storyline, and a central character, a renowned concert pianist named Ryder, who somehow finds himself in a city at once strange and familiar, peopled with figures from his past, ruled by rituals he half-understands, split by fierce rivalries that he gropes to decipher.

It appears that he is being asked to give the performance of a lifetime in a short while. But the day lengthens as the hour of the concert approaches, and Ryder moves through a world that is sometimes countryside, sometimes cityscape, associating with strangers who seem to know him, including a woman who seems to be his wife and a boy who seems to be his own child, and hearing about tumultuous events which are never explained.

Many readers, unable to bear a novel with so many uncertainties, give up in frustration, and you will see that fully half of the reviews here are four stars or less.

Among the highest praise given this novel came from Anita Brookner: 'Almost certainly a masterpiece.' That 'almost certainly' is amusing, a bit of insurance in case the critic is making a fool of herself.

What is the book about? Is it the landscape of a man's unconscious mind? Is it about psychological disintegration? Is it actually a metaphor for Life itself, with a capital L?

I have no hesitation in recommending this book very highly to all readers. Give it a go, see if you think it's a masterpiece, or 'impenetrable,' as one reviewer has decided. You may find, as I did, that this novel is one of the easiest to read, and most difficult to explain, of all 20th Century novels in English. But I hope you will also find that it is deeply rewarding.

35 people found this helpful

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Joan T Blake

Disappointing

Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2021

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This novel is so unlike other works by Ishiguro. Ishiguro's writing is usually spare and beautiful, but this work is wordy and long-winded. The story is actually a formless dream, and thus left me feeling no interest in the outcome or investment in the protagonist. I've loved Ishiguro's other novels, but this one was a huge disappointment and I ultimately put it down unfinished.

4 people found this helpful

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akreader

Best of Ishiguro

Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2017

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My favorite of Kazuo Ishiguro's novels and that's saying something. This novel is a masterpiece. I think of it often, even long after the last time I read it. Highly recommended.

16 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Marcus

Hard to read, but rewarding

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 18, 2020

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It is hard to review this book without giving away some of its surprises. You may want to look away now...

Some books are hard to read because the language is difficult or the plot is convoluted. This book has clear language and its episodes are easy to follow. However, the world of the book is strangely different from ours. Clint Eastwood and Yul Brynner star in 2001 A Space Odyssey; nail-bitingly drawn-out distractions seem to have taken no time at all; distant parts of the landscape connect to near parts; cringingly inept social behaviour has positive consequences.

Science fiction and post-modern literature deviate from reality in their own ways, but both generally preserve some aspects of narrative structure -- Gravity's Rainbow has a clear sense of place and time, and its logic follow understandable rules; Lord of the Rings is not about our world, but it is very much about some world. In contrast, The Unconsoled is closer to historical and geographical reality -- characters before around 1900 are all real, but far more disturbing in its logic, spatial and temporal dimensions.

Reading this book is a deeply disturbing experience. Digression nests within digression and the reader is expected to keep track of multiple layers of narrative, some of which simply disappear without trace. The narrative voice is generally first person (Ryder) but at many points you realise the narrator is describing something that Ryder himself could not possibly be witnessing. A sense of panic pervades the book -- there is so much to do and so little time while distractions follow distractions -- yet appointments are met. The flow of time is so awry that long car journeys away from the city result in no time elapse at all; nighttime sequences see-saw between early evening and the following morning and back again.

Characters in the book have a static quality, as if they represent different views in time of the same person. Memories of events in the book do not match the events themselves. Post-hoc justification of actions turns into memory.

The arts are massively important in the book. Artists, particularly musicians, can make or break society. On the surface, this appears as intellectual snobbery, but I don't think that is the point. This is a virtual world, created within a book, so of course it is the arts that support it.

When you read a book with a first-person narrator, you enter the book's world in a different state from the narrator who represents you. The narrator has previous experiences and memories, and recognises the other characters in the book, whereas the reader must pick these up as she reads. An unwritten convention for authors is that the book contains a world which is logically consistent; the narrator moves through and interacts with the world and the characters in it; as a side-effect of this narration, the reader learns more and more about the world until she is at one with the narrator, following his journey with his knowledge of the world and its characters.

This book breaks those conventions. At the start of the narrative, the narrator (Ryder) seems to know as little about his own history and relationships as you the reader. Memories mysteriously appear, the way they do for the reader of any book.

Many books have subplots and parenthetical action, but they maintain the fiction of a narrator who travels through the plotline with a clear point of view and timeline. The Unconsoled breaks this convention too. Ryder seems able to follow the action the way the reader does, even though his character is stuck in a car outside the building where the action is.

Most books have plots where good actions result in good consequences, and mistakes result in disasters. The Unconsoled breaks this convention too. Ryder misses appointments, staggers through the plot with no schedule, fails to hit his principle goal, yet none of this seems to matter in the end. In most books, decisions by the reader have no impact on the action, who can watch while the narrator's decisions have good or bad consequences. In The Unconsoled, decisions and delays by the narrator have no impact on the action.

The Unconsoled blurs the boundary between narrator and reader. The narrator interacts with his virtual world in the same way that the reader interacts with her world of the novel, learning about characters and relationships at the same time as him, while he can follow sub-plots and have privileged information in the same way as her.

So what is The Unconsoled about? Most importantly, it is about the novel and the roles of reader and narrator. By undermining these roles, Ishiguro forces us to reexamine them. Reading The Unconsoled can make you grow as a reader, no longer blind to the conventions that tie you to the book you are reading. Through the novel, Ryder is tormented with panic, things undone, unavoidable digressions, yet he ends the novel in a state of serenity, in a loop like the end of an LP. The same happens to the reader -- reading this book is hard work, but it can bring you to a state of deeper understanding.

15 people found this helpful

Archy

Kafka in Wonderland?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 13, 2017

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I normally shy away from books as long as this, but, like many other of the five-star reviewers, I was captivated by the prose and the characters. Plotwise it's simple: the narrator, Mr Ryder, a famous concert pianist, arrives in an unnamed city to give a performance. He's soon diverted again and again by numerous requests, some trivial, some demanding, by the various 'unconsoled' characters that he meets. At first obliging and helpful, Mr Ryder's plight gets more and more frustrating and like a character from Kafka, he goes round and round from one implausible situation to another.

Stylistically it's all wrong, with almsot beginners' faults such as a first person narrative that steps sideways into the minds of the people he meets, or describes their actions when he's not there. But as the scenes become more and more dreamlike it becomes clear that this is a strange Alice-in-Wonderland nightmare that Mr Ryder cannot easily escape from.

There's a lot going on in the novel, and it will probably benefit from more than one read. But I'm not quite ready to go down that particular rabbit hole again just yet. Great stuff!

13 people found this helpful

A McCulloch

GREAT

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 15, 2015

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In my view this is one of the great modern novels. The enthralling story of a dream (?) that touches upon many issues including service, fatherhood, ego and Ishiguro's standard - what is really important to us and how we evaluate ourselves.

It is not easy to compare it with other books although it has the same magical qualities as other fine novels which address reality through a dream like landscape - such as A Maggot and The White Hotel. However, it also quite different to these.

It is hard to reduce the novel to simplistic descriptions and once again with this author we can expect negative reactions although I suspect many of these come from critics and readers who prefer more conventional pleasures and more apparent prose "styles".

7 people found this helpful

BlestMiss T

The Unresolved...is Ishiguro trying to screw with our minds?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 21, 2009

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Having read 'Never Let Me Go' and then 'Remains of the Day', by now I can truly say I am a fan of Ishiguro's writing style. It manages to be both accessible, without patronising the audience. Yet, he still manages to explore some complex matters of the heart and life in general, capturing with such realism and empathy the voice of his protagonists. This is thus the saving grace of 'The Unconsoled'. World renowned pianist Ryder is due to give the performance of his life in an unnamed Central European city, but he can't seem to get a grip as his surroundings get more and more surreal. I was a little taken aback when I read some of the more venomous reviews of this novel. However having now finished the book I can see their point. It's not so much the ephemeral structure of the story that grates. Once you get used to it, it's not a problem. If anything it resembles any number of dreams you might have had. I think the problem is there are too many unnecessary detours and longwinded, futile monologues that it feels like Ishiguro tries our patience making the book as long as he did. He would have got away with it a lot more if it was a couple of hundred pages shorter. By now I am used to Ishiguro's trademark ambiguous endings. Things tend to taper off without much in the way of a major resolution. I normally find this strangely satisfying, if not a bit sad. At the end of the day it's realistic, life goes on. However after being lead on a merry dance through so much of 'The Unconsoled' you feel like you should have been rewarded with a more concrete ending. Some of the characters undergo evolution I suppose but most of it does seem rather pointless. Again the aimlessness of the book only really started to get to me when I was about two thirds of the way through. Much like 'Remains of the Day' the central character of The Unconsoled, Mr Ryder, wasn't an appealing one to me. He's rather self-involved and his pomposity as subtle as it is reveals itself a lot more towards the end of the book. Too often he's quiet when he should speak up and when he does his annoyance is expressed too late or misguided.

I'll still give this 3 stars because Ishiguro is a master story teller and his ability to draw you back in even when you lose faith in the book is quite special. His narrative has such a deceptive ease about it. I'm still yet to read anything of his that is as good as 'Never Let Me Go' but I'm not deterred. I'm looking forward to getting stuck into his latest 'Nocturnes'.

8 people found this helpful

G. Dunford

Unique

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 14, 2014

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I don't know of another book like this one. I've read parts of other books that devote paragraphs or pages to a similar style but never a whole book. I imagine lots of other reviews allude to the fact that it reads like a dream and that's exactly what I found it to be like. I think it's a brilliant piece of writing, for how many of us could accurately capture a dream in text? If you want a traditional story, that you can make sense of, then look somewhere else. If you want to try something different then read this, but expect to be puzzled and slightly disturbed along the way.

4 people found this helpful