How do I start to explain what the new book, The Buried Giant, by British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro is? Yes, it’s an Arthurian fantasy. Undoubtedly, it’s exquisitely written in Man Booker prize winner Ishiguro’s trademark controlled and elegant prose. And of course there are the peripheral noises often made when a “mainstream” writer ventures into genre territory, in this case predictably questioning Ishiguro’s opinions on genre fantasy as a worthy form of literature. But what’s most important is that Ishiguro has turned his precise and skilful prose to tell a story that uses fantasy tropes in a way that results in one of the most haunting pieces of imaginative fiction that I feel I am likely to read this year.
So how do I explain what this book is? I’ll start here: In July 1995, more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were massacred in the town of Srebrenicia by the Serbian military. This event was the culmination of the Bosnian conflict, a war between different ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia – groups of people, who for decades had lived side by side, as neighbours and friends. Yet the fall of communism in the region, and a series of subsequent political upheavals, led to the breakup of Yugoslavia. A buried giant resurfaced, in the form of forgotten grudges and old hatreds, leading to a conflict which involved ethnic cleansing and other atrocities. How can two groups of people, working and living in close proximity one day, go on to commit some of the worst atrocities imaginable against each other the next day?
The Buried Giant is a parable about this social psychology. There’s some irony to the fact the Ishiguro has crafted an allegory about forgetting so that readers will remember the tragic events of relatively recent history. Along with this important concern, The Buried Giant also explores issues at a more personal and intimate level, as it interrogates the ways we can wilfully forget the tragedies our own pasts, both individually and in our immediate relationships, to go on living in the present.
At the beginning of The Buried Giant a contemporary narrator’s voice introduces readers to two elderly married Britons, named Axl and Beatrice, living in post-Roman Dark Ages England. The narrator quickly describes this historic setting as imbued with elements from mythology – ogres roam the land raiding villages and pixies populate the waterways waiting to drown unsuspecting victims. For a reason that is not made clear until the end of the novel, Axl and Beatrice seem somewhat ostracised in the warren in which they live by their fellow Britons. Their only source of light, a candle, has been taken away from them, so that at night they sleep in the dark surrounded by spiders and fading memories.
As I say, the reason that Axl and Beatrice are shunned by the community is not explained. The narrator explains, “in this community the past was rarely discussed. I do not mean that it was taboo. I mean that is had somehow faded into a mist as dense as that which hung over the marshes” (page 7). In the world of the book, this is literal, not metaphorical. A strange mist has swept across the land, causing everybody to forget everything except for the events of the last few days. How long this mist has been affecting the memories of the people … well … nobody can remember.
Axl and Beatrice, fed up with the persecution they suffer in the warren, decide to travel to see their son, who apparently holds position of some importance in a nearby village a couple of days away. On their journey, they find themselves allied with two Saxons, named Wistan and Edwin. Wistan is a warrior who has come from a Saxon kingdom over the mountains on a secret mission entrusted to him by his king. Edwin is a boy from a nearby Saxon village. Edwin was taken by ogres in a recent raid. Wistan rescued to boy, but not before Edwin suffered a bite from a creature that resulted in him being considered cursed and outcast from his home. As Axl, Beatrice, Wistan and Edwin travel together, their fates become entwined not only with each other, but also with the dragon Querig, who’s very breath is the mist that has cast a spell of forgetting across the land.
The experience of reading The Buried Giant was not unlike immersing myself in a thick fog of both confusion and melancholy (and I actually mean this as a compliment to the book). Anybody familiar with Ishiguro’s work will know he often infuses his prose with an atmosphere of ambiguity and sadness. Conversations like this are frequent in The Buried Giant:
“And why would you be after medicines, princess?”
“A small discomfort I feel from time to time. This woman might know something to soothe it.”
“What sort of discomfort, princess? Where does it trouble you?”
“It’s nothing. It’s only because we’re needing shelter here I’m thinking of it at all.”
“But where does it lie, princess? This pain?”
“Oh…” Without turning to him she pressed her hand to her side, just below the ribcage, then laughed. “It’s nothing to speak of. You see, it hasn’t slowed me walking here today.” (page 48)
Ishiguro weaves a constant feeling of unease, at times tipping over into dread, into the book. Barely a page goes by without a piece of dialogue, event or description that had a dissociative effect on the reader. While realistic about my chances of resolution for all of these mysteries, the need to discover the answers to at least some of the book’s puzzles kept me turning pages and pulled my through the, at times, directionless and stilted narrative. Though I’m painfully aware such an analogy is overused in book reviews today, I can’t help but say The Buried Giant reads like an Arthurian fantasy as if it were written by Kafka.
And The Buried Giant is most certainly an Arthurian fantasy in many of the ways I expected, peppered with both adventure and magic (though Ishiguro is far more interested in critiquing chivalry than celebrating it). There are mysterious boatmen and witches, corrupt monks and dark dungeons. Sir Gawain even plays a major role, as does the aforementioned dragon Querig. There are several sword fights and seat-of-your-pants escapes. But it’s all told through Ishiguro’s skewed approach.
The sword fights I’ve just mentioned are illustrative of Ishiguro’s odd style. They are not back-and-forth duels told in blow-by-blow descriptions. In fact, they are all over in the blink of an eye, with one slash made, the loser falling and the victor left standing and contemplating (much like such duels would have played out in the historic period). However, Ishiguro manages to create a palpable sense of tension in these scenes that exceeds similar drawn at affairs in genre fantasy. There’s a tug-of-war in these duels between honour and barbarism, something that mirrors one of the overarching concerns of the narrative.
Similarly, one of the major action set pieces in the novel is not narrated in a way that would be familiar or comfortable to many. Actually, the scene I’m thinking of (which fellow readers of the book will recognise as one involving Wistan and a burning tower) is not directly “witnessed” by the reader at all, but after a lengthy set up is only recounted in bits and pieces in the past tense by a couple of key characters. To draw a similarity with an author almost all genre fantasy fans are familiar, I actually found this approach reminiscent of Tolkien – he used a similar technique several times in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, for example to tell of Gandalf’s escape from Isengard. I liked the way Ishiguro let my imagination evoke the scene much more effectively than a more detailed telling might have. Though I suspect many other readers will find this approach frustrating.
For me, the frustrating thing about The Buried Giant was that it seemed determined to keep me at a distance. The precision of the prose, the constant melancholy of the atmosphere, the aloof mystery surrounding the characters, and the staccato rhythms of the plot all seemed to be pushing me away from completely immersing myself in the book. This is not to say that it isn’t a worthy read, as it almost certainly is. However, the impact of the book is reminiscent of the following reflection made by Beatrice early on:
“But then again I wonder if what we feel in our hearts today isn’t like these raindrops still falling on us from the soaked leaves above, even though the sky itself long stopped raining. I’m wondering if without our memories, there’s nothing for it but for our love to fade and die.” (page 45)
The book had more impact on me after I put down, compared to when I was reading it. It is a book that lingered in my mind and continued to haunt me long after I had finished, much like leaves continuing to drip on my head long after the rain has ceased.
Many coming to this review will be aware of the online “discussion” between Ursula Le Guin and Ishiguro, where the former questions the latter’s opinion of fantasy as a worthwhile genre. Regardless of his views about the genre, Ishiguro has used the tools of fantasy to write an elegiac and thoughtful novel that is concerned with both atrocities that have occurred, and continue to occur, at the level of whole communities, as well as offering insights into the ways that guilt and forgiveness can haunt relationships at a far more personal level. Regardless of whether Ishiguro is on the side of dragons and pixies or not, after reading this book I am convinced that I am on the side of Ishiguro.
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
Published by Faber & Faber, March 2015
352 pages
ISBN: 9780571315048
Reviewed by Luke Brown, April 2015
