The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro - A Review

 

Kazuo Ishiguro's 2015 novel takes place in a Britain of the sixth or seventh century, a Britain in which Britons and Saxons live uneasily together in a post-war land.

At the heart of the novel are the characters of Axl and Beatrice, an elderly Briton couple. As with all the characters in this novel, they suffer from the effects of a mist that hangs over the land, a mist that leaves everyone with only short term memory. Ishiguro uses this mist as a device to explore how people living in a land troubled by war can cope with traumatic events through forgetting. This lack of memories means that these two characters have forgotten much of their own personal history too. For, aside from those explorations of collective memory and collective trauma, at the core of this book is an exploration of marital bonds and love.

There is much that could be discussed when taking into consideration The Buried Giant, for this story is an allegory, and references to myth (King Arthur, Sir Gawain, boatmen transporting the dead) and fantasy (dragons, pixies, magic) abound in its telling. Themes of memory loss, trauma, marital love, and war are taken in through this myth and fantasy, requiring the reader to be engaged in the world of Axl and Beatrice. This isn't a mistake; Ishiguro intentionally created a world that would be unfamiliar to the reader, so that they might be drawn into the allegory, and not take the telling quite so literally.

I haven't all of Ishiguro's works on my shelves but even just a cursory look through a list of his novels will tell you that he explores different genres. The last Ishiguro novel I read was The Remains of the Day (my blog post about that novel can be read here), and I loved that book, so I came to The Buried Giant with some expectation of what the book might be. However, the two books are entirely different. The genre, the way in which the story is told, the type of story that it is . . . But, that is not the fault of Ishiguro. I know he isn't an author to get comfortable in a formula and stick with it.

I will be coming back to The Buried Giant. I think that when I reread this novel I will find things in there that I didn't notice the first time around.

At the end of the book, I was most affected by how Ishiguro handled the theme of marital love and the bond between his two main characters. He takes in the light and the dark of married life and love. The characters, in their quest to free the land of the mist that leaves them without memories of their lives together - accept for foggy patches of recollection - they sometimes have their doubts about what they do and what they don't want to remember. However, ultimately, the pains in their life together do not damage their bond. Nor the challenges they face, and the troubled land they live in.

There are other themes in this novel - grief; death; and how people navigate trauma in their lives, both as individuals, and collectively. And, Kazuo Ishiguro, in this allegory that takes us into his fictional fantasy Britain of the sixth or seventh century, handles them with skill and subtlety. I don't think I appreciated it fully the first time around, but it's a book that I will be returning to.

So, if you haven't read The Buried Giant, I would say it is worth following Axl and Beatrice as they set off on their journey across this land of mist and lost memories that you will find in this book. They journey, seeking a son that they haven't seen for years, and corners of their love that had been forgotten are revealed to them.

I sometimes fear that my posts are a little rambling as I explore themes, plots, and characters in some of the novels that I have read. However, I hope that you found something informative or enjoyable in this post. If you did, perhaps you might consider buying me a coffee (it goes great with books) at my ko-fi page.

Until next time (when I think I will be discussing a bawdy Shakespeare sonnet), take care, read lots, and be kind.