It's been quite a while since I read Kazuo Ishiguro for the first time, having found The Unconsoled while browsing in Barnes and Nobles. I wrote some posts about it in early 2012, which can be found here. It seems like I read it much more recently; I vividly remember the strangeness of The Unconsoled, as well as the mesmerizing way Mr. Ryder experienced the events that occurred around him in the novel.
A Pale View of Hills is Ishiguro's first book, published in 1982. It centers around Etsuko, a Japanese woman who in the "present" has been married twice and has had two children. Her eldest daughter is named Keiko, but Keiko has hung herself before the book's events begin. Niki is Etsuko's youngest daughter, and the novel opens with Niki coming to visit Etsuko, now a widow living by herself in England. The mother and daughter spend some days together, and Etsuko finds herself reminiscing about a particular time when she was still living in Japan. Most of the novel focuses on these memories, which take Etsuko back to her youth when she was married with her first husband and pregnant for the first time with Keiko. Japan, at that time, was recovering from World War II, facing a time of great transition. The United States occupation had introduced many new ideas that disrupted traditional Japanese life. Of course, Nagasaki was also victim to the nuclear bomb. More personally, Etsuko was dealing with what seems to be a strange friendship with a neighbor named Sachiko, a widow who was living with a difficult daughter of her own.
Though the novel is less than 200 pages long, there is a lot to talk about. Firstly, there is the obvious presentation of memory. Ishiguro's novel makes quite clear the insufficiency of memory. Repetition in remembered dialogue, much like a broken record, is only one small way the novel demonstrates this. The narrator herself often says things such as: "Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily colored by the circumstances in which one remembers, and no doubt this applies to certain of the recollections I have gathered here." (156) Towards the end of the novel, there is even more eerie and blatant mixing up of memories, but I will get into that later.
A second, very strong thematic concept that seems to run throughout the novel is that of the difficulties, the sadness, and intricacies of motherhood. In the earlier time frame of the novel, Etsuko is pregnant for the first time. She seems to feel understandably worried about this, especially considering the horror of the War that Etsuko and those around her had to witness. However, she also expresses a just-as-natural joy and expectation. One smaller character in the novel, who lost most of her family in the war, is buoyed up by her only existing son. Characters often express that as long as they have even one child, there is something worth hoping for.
Furthermore, in this earlier time frame, there is Sachiko, who is a very non-traditional mother. She lets her daughter, who is still quite young, run wild even when it is night and dark, even around a river. Sachiko seems to be in an unstable relationship with an American man, whom her daughter blatantly does not like. And yet, even with all this, Sachiko often speaks about doing only what she feels right for her daughter, and in her own way seems to be raising her daughter the best way she knows how. This theme of motherhood even runs into animals. Mariko and Sachiko have a cat who, throughout the course of the book, has kittens that Mariko cherishes very much. The intense feeling of protection that Mariko feels for these kittens is memorable and maternal, and at the end, her own mother drowns them, being unable to keep them any longer. This is a sad moment and one that in a strange way echoes the melancholy that permeates the book. For it is not to be forgotten that Etsuko's child kills herself. This event, though never written about, is at the center of the novel.
The second time frame also very much highlights motherhood in that it focuses exclusively on the relationship of Etsuko and Niki. They do not seem as close as Etsuko wants them to be: Niki is nineteen and independent, living in London away from her mother, leading a life that seems very different than what Etsuko knew growing up. But Etsuko is respectful of Niki's life choices and seems to focus on enjoying the time she has with her daughter. She also reminisces in this time on her own parenting skills, doubting herself on how she raised Keiko and dealt with her strange personality. The dual time frame very much emphasizes the theme of motherhood. In her memories, Etsuko is only pregnant and not yet a mother; in the present, knows only too well the sadness and rejection of motherhood.
It is interesting that Keiko is at the center of A Pale View of Hills, considering the reader never gets to properly meet her. Keiko is present in both settings, however. In one as an unborn child--in the other as a ghost and a memory. And it turns out that she may not be as absent as the reader was led to believe. Though this is a bit of a spoiler, it must be said that Mariko is not only what she seems to be on the surface: the strange daughter of Etsuko's one-time neighbor. In many ways, Mariko seems to be a harbinger, an echo, or a misremembered memory of Keiko. When telling her daughter Niki about a particular memory she had had, a memory the reader had been privvy to, Etsuko mentions Keiko having been in good spirits that day. And yet, the reader had been told Keiko was not yet born--only Meriko had been present.
There are many other themes and topics that I wanted to discuss, such as the more broader familial relationships in the novel (father-in-law and daughter-in-law, husband and wife, father and son, sisterhood, etc.), as well as the tensions between traditional Japanese culture and the modernization that came with WWII. I also wanted to briefly discuss the title. However, this post lengthens and my next book calls.
In fact, I read a book before A Pale View of Hills: The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood. I won't write about it too much, but I enjoyed it. The novel is not light-hearted, it is kind of slow, and really it only comes together at the very end. Still, I recommend it to people who like books centering on family secrets.
Till next time, fellow readers!
The Avid Reader
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