“Like a cord suddenly snapping and a thick curtain dropping to the floor to reveal a whole new world, a world full of sunlight and warmth.”
As I’m currently reading a book that I’m hating but am obligated to read (long, very boring story), I thought I would reminisce about a book that I absolutely loved but that I know I will never read again.
There’s actually a couple of those (shout out to 1984, a brilliant book which broke my heart so thoroughly I don’t think I’ll ever recover) but The Unconsoled is worth a blog entry as it’s not mentioned very often.
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| Picture from Wikipedia |
It’s not an easy read, which might be why it often gets sidelined when compared with Ishiguro’s other novels (i.e. Never Let Me Go; Remains of the Day) but it is engaging and challenging, and it sucks you in and, much like a good maze, after a couple of turns you have no idea how you got there are how to get out again.
I suppose that might be frustrating, but as your protagonist is similarly confused about what’s happening you can take comfort of someone being in the same boat as you. Which is unusual in a novel where you’re either in someone’s head or a third party watching it all happen. I like the subversion of normal novel structure. Expectations of knowing what’s happening and why are never met.
In the Unconsoled, our narrator Ryder falls into these situations which transform into others after a few pages, but he remains calm, sincere, and absorbed by the moment he’s in rather than waste energy trying to unpick everything around him. So, as boat-buddies, we do the same; swimming peacefully through the narrative and watching the landscape swirl and change around us.
Like him, we don’t know where the path we’re on is going and we don’t know why we keep walking down it. But yet I keep walking – the lack of knowledge serves to pique my interest more, and further down the rabbit hole I fall.
Important things come sharply into focus before blurring out again. People step out of the wings for a few pages before disappearing again. Threads are picked up, dropped, and picked up again. Time doesn’t fit together and nothing ever gets resolved. But there’s not just confusion and narrative interest. There’s also joy and humour here, not to mention incredibly poignant moments and characters.
I don’t think it’s original of me to compare the novel to a dream (in fact I assume this is what Ishiguro was going for) but it’s more than that. It’s a stress-dream. The fear of performance, the doubt over whether Ryder is who the characters think he is, the interruptions every time he tries to sleep. Like the frog in the pot of water, you don’t feel the stress and tension rise until your shoulders are up by your ears.
And it’s probably this stress that stops me from ever picking it up again. I know now the extent to the twists and turns and I know the inevitable toll it will take on my body and, although I am so pleased I put myself through it once, I could never do it again. I would try to read too much into it; try to make sense of it. That would normally bring me much joy, but I loved this novel because it forced me to drop all that, it forced me to drift dream-like through the pages. A singular experience and one which I would not wish to taint or try to recreate and experience some ersatz simulacrum.
All in all, the Unconsoled is not for the faint-hearted, but it is an unforgettable, thought-provoking, and worthwhile read which I highly recommend.
*Quote from Kazuo Ishiguro
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