BrothersJudd.com

Home | Reviews | Blog | Daily | Glossary | Orrin's Stuff | Email

A Pale View of Hills ()


Granta Best British Novelists (1983)

Etsuko, the narrator of A Pale View of Hills, is a native of Nagasaki, who left her Japanese husband and Japan for England and an English husband.  In the story she must come to grips with the suicide of her daughter, Keiko,  by the first marriage.  She does so by recalling the Summer in Nagasaki when she was pregnant with Keiko, and her own friendship there with Sachiko, who, having lost her husband and a son (in the bombing ?), insists on moving forward optimistically, deluding herself into believing that an American named Frank will take her away to a new life in the States.

The tension that emerges from the narrative comes from the several different strategies that characters adopt : there's Sachiko's almost absurd forward-looking optimism; there's the backward-looking nostalgia of Etsuko's father-in-law, which excuses much of the cultural pathology which led to Japan's annihilation in WWII; and there's the stasis of her husband, who seems unable to move forward or to deal with the past.  From Etsuko's life choices it is obvious that she eventually chose Sachiko's path, but Keiko's suicide suggests the problematic nature of Etsuko's decision to choose a Western life.  Etsuko's reminiscences of life in Japan are generally favorable, in particular the visual portrait of Japan is all done in dreamy pastels, the "pale view" of the title.  And in the novel's closing pages, as Etsuko's younger daughter disparages the submissive role of women in Japan, Etsuko responds that :

    It's not a bad thing at all, the old Japanese way.

This suggests that she may regret the decisions that she has made, but the story ends with a surprising revelation about the relationships of the various characters and with Etsuko, despite her own regrets,  seeming to at least accept the enthusiasm with which her daughter Nicki embraces the West's cultural freedom.

Ishiguro's first novel is similar in narrative style to the much better known Remains of the Day.  Both stories are told by somewhat unreliable narrators, who are certainly giving us an incomplete version of events, though we don't know whether they are lying to themselves at the same time.  Remains of the Day benefits greatly from two elements that give it a dramatic tension which is sadly lacking here.  First, there's the rise of Nazi Germany in the background, which we know will eventually make Lord Darlington's efforts to keep England out of the War seem somehow tainted.  Second, there's the almost unbearable non-courtship/courtship between Mr. Stevens and Miss Kenton.  In Pale View, we'd sort of like to understand the suicide, but it's never an imperative.

In light of the fact that Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki in 1954, and that his family emigrated to England when he was six, it is impossible to avoid viewing this book as at least something of a self-portrait.  It is certainly easy to understand that he would feel himself to be an outsider to both his native and his adopted cultures, and as a conservative, I'd be the last one to dismiss either someone's feelings of nostalgia for a lost past or their intuition that the freedom to be found in the West often comes at the price of a  kind of cultural atomization, but the Japan that he describes here doesn't seem to bear much relation to the real nation.  The "pale view" is perhaps too filtered to take into account exactly the kind of racist, militarist, static society that Japan had developed into by the time of WWII, and how little it has done in the ensuing years to reinvigorate itself.

Ishiguro himself has said :

    In some ways I think that nostalgia can be quite a positive emotion. It does allow us to picture a
    better world. It's kind of an emotional sister of idealism.

That's quite true, but a nostalgia which is uninformed by reality is just as dangerous as idealism, which by definition is always a stranger to reality.  For all the faults of modern Britain, and they are legion, it has to be better than the Japan of the 1940's.

The novel is interesting chiefly for the clues it reveals about Ishiguro's psychology and for the patterns it establishes for his subsequent writing.  But it is entirely too subtle and languidly paced to hold the reader's interest (this unsubtle reader's anyway), and the past it longs for is too imperfect for us to easily share in the longing.

(Reviewed:)

Grade: (C)


Websites:

Kazuo Ishiguro Links:

    -AUTHOR PAGE: Kazuo Ishiguro (The Guardian)
    -AUTHOR PAGE: Kazuo Ishiguro (Faber & Faber)
    -WIKIPEDIA: Kazuo Ishiguro
    -FILMOGRAPHY: Kazuo Ishiguro (IMDB)
    -GOOGLE BOOK: Never Let Me Go
    -WIKIPEDIA: Never Let Me Go
    -Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day - with annotations: Scroll down to see how Kazuo Ishiguro has annotated this copy of his novel. The annotations are in text format at the bottom of the page (The Guardian, 5/18/13)
    - All-TIME 100 Novels :Critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo pick the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923—the beginning of TIME. (TIME)
   
-BOOK LIST: The 20 best books of the decade: What are the books that can be said to have defined the first decade of the millennium? Here, Michael Prodger assesses the literature that shaped our reading habits of the past 10 years, produced new genres, created controversy, and entertained us, and then there are the books that, quite simply, would be hailed as great in any era . (Michael Prodger, 1/21/10, The Telegraph)
    -LECTURE: Nobel Lecture: Kazuo Ishiguro, Nobel Prize in Literature 2017 (Streamed live on Dec 7, 2017)
    -INTERVIEW: Kazuo Ishiguro Answers the Proust Questionnaire: The Nobel laureate and screenwriter of Living on well-worn guitars, Japanese films, and good cake. (MARCH 9, 2023, Vanity Fair)
    -INTERVIEW: Kazuo Ishiguro on Life, Death, and the Movies (Elaine Szewczyk, March 6, 2023, The Millions)
    -
   
-INTERVIEW: Kazuo Ishiguro: my love affair with film: The Nobel Prize-winner and screenwriter of Living talks about the effect Japanese film had on him (Tanjil Rashid, November 5, 2022, The Spectator)
    -INTERVIEW: WILL KNIGHTCULTURE03.08.2021 12:52 PM: Klara and the Sun Imagines a Social Schism Driven by AI: The Nobel Prize–winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro talks to WIRED about AI, Crispr, and his hopes for humanity. (Will Knight, 3/08/21, Wired)
    -PROFILE: How Ishiguro rewrote himself (New Statesman, 2/26/21)
    -INTERVIEW: Kazuo Ishiguro on How His New Novel Klara and the Sun Is a Celebration of Humanity ( DAN STEWART, MARCH 2, 2021, TIME)
    -PROFILE: Kazuo Ishiguro: ‘I have to be careful to guard against genius syndrome’: Nobel laureate on writing his new novel in lockdown and his admiration for Irish culture (John Self, 2/25/21, Irish Times)
    -INTERVIEW: Kazuo Ishiguro Sees What the Future Is Doing to Us (Giles Harvey, Feb. 23rd, 2021, NY Times Book Review)
    -INTERVIEW: Kazuo Ishiguro: 'AI, gene-editing, big data ... I worry we are not in control of these things any more' (Lisa Allardice, 20 Feb 2021, The Guardian)
    -INTERVIEW: with Kazuo Ishiguro (Graham Swift, Fall 1989, BOMB)
    -INTERVIEW: Living memories : Kazuo Ishiguro grew up in Guildford but vividly recalls his early childhood in Nagasaki. (Nicholas Wroe, 18 February 2005, The Guardian)
    -INTERVIEW: This much I know: Kazuo Ishiguro: As the film adaptation of his bestselling novel Never Let Me Go hits the screens, the author reflects on past passions, fatherhood and critical abuse (Chris Sullivan, 5 February 2011, The Observer)
    -INTERVIEW: Kazuo Ishiguro: 'There comes a point when you can count the number of books you're going to write before you die. And you think, God, there's only four left' (Decca Aitkenhead, 4/26/09, The Guardian)
    -PROFILE: A Case of Cultural Misperception (SUSAN CHIRA, October 28, 1989, NY Times)
    -PROFILE: The hiding place : Kazuo Ishiguro, whose first novel in five years is published next month, is the quiet man of English letters - as spare and subtle as his contemporaries are dazzling and showy says Sukhdev Sandhu. (Sukhdev Sandhu, 06 Mar 2005, The Telegraph)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Never Let Me Go (Grade Saver)
    -READING GUIDE: Never Let Me Go Oprah.com)
    -ARCHIVES: Kazuo Ishiguro (The Telegraph)
    -ARCHIVES: Kazuo Ishiguro (New Statesman)
    -ARCHIVES: Ishiguro (NY Times)
    -ARCHIVES: Ishiguro (The Guardian)
    -
   
-ESSAY: KAZUO ISHIGURO’S SUFFERING SERVANTS (Noah Millman, 8/02/21, Modern Age)
    -ESSAY: Truth and Memory: The Unreliable Narrators of Kazuo Ishiguro (BN Editors, March 3, 2021, Barnes & Noble Reads)
    -PODCAST: of Ishiguro’s AI and Grendel’s Mother (Times Literary Supplement)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (James Bowman, New Atlantis)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (Complete Review)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (Andrew Barrow, The Independent)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (Siddhartha Deb, New Statesman)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (Sarah Kerr, NY Times Books Review)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (Philip Hensher, The Spectator)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (Ruth Scurr, Times Literary Supplement)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (A.N. Wilson, The Telegraph)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (Theo Taitt, The Telegraph)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (Caroline Moore, The Telegraph)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (James Browning, Village Voice)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (Michiko Kakutani, NY Times)
    -
   
-REVIEW ESSAY: Simple, Sparse and Profound: David Sexton on Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (David Sexton, April 26, 2023, Lit Hub)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (Maureen Corrigan, NPR)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (Rachel Cusk, The Guardian)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (M. John Harrison, The Guardian)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (Lev Grossman, TIME)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (Katie Davis, Literary Traveler)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (Andrew O'Hehir, Salon)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (Books Speak Volumes)
    -REVIEW ARCHIVES: Never Let Me Go (Reviews of Books)
    -REVIEW: of Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro (Tom Fleming, The Guardian)
    -REVIEW: of Nocturnes (Michiko Kakutani, NY Times)
    -REVIEW: of Nocturnes (Leo Robson, New Statesman)
    -REVIEW: of Nocturnes (John Preston, The Telegraph)
    -REVIEW: of Nocturnes (Jane Schilling, The Telegraph)
    -REVIEW: of When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro (Complete Review)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro< (The Complete Review)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun/a> (Laura Miller, Salon)
   
-REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Anne Enright, The Guardian)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Kevin Power, Independent ie)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Brian Bethune, Macleans)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Miranda France, Prospect)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Lori Feathers, Bookmarks)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Carrie Callaghan, Washington Independent Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Annalisa Quinn, NPR)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Dennis Lim, Book Forum)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (James Wood, The New Yorker)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Heller McAlpin, CS Monitor)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Maureen Corrigan, NPR)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Anita Felicelli, LA Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Paul Perry, Independent ie)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Radhika Jones, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Thomas Jones, London Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (James Purdon, Literary Review)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Miranda France, Prospect)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Paul Anderson, Newtown Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (New Republic)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Damon Linker, The week)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Joy Clarkson, Plough Quarterly)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Lindsay Bartkowski, Electric Lit)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Varun Gauri, 3 Quarks)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Bruno Maçães, City Journal)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Aimee Bender, LitHub)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun (Claire Chambers, 3 Quarks)
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun ()
    -REVIEW: of Klara and the Sun ()
    -REVIEW: of Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro (Derek Neal, Three Quarks) FILM:
    -INFO: Never Let Me Go (IMDB)
    -FILMOGRAPHY: Mark Romanek (IMDB)
    -
   
-REVIEW ESSAY: Ruined lives in ‘The Remains of the Day’ (Jeffrey Meyers, 8/20/23, The Article)
    -REVIEW ARCHIVES: Never Let Me Go (Metacritic)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (Stephen Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (Noel Murray, AV Club)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (James Berardinelli, ReelViews)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (David Denby, The New Yorker)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (Richard Corliss, TIME)
    -REVIEW: of Never Let Me Go (Tim Robey, The Telegraph)
    -FILM REVIEW: Living: Kazuo Ishiguro’s ode to Akira Kurosawa: The novelist’s moving new film draws on a Japanese master for its portrait of terminal Englishness. (David Sexton, New Statesman)
    -ARTICLE: Taika Waititi Returns to Robots for Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun: The Oscar winner (and former Star Wars droid) is set to direct a film based on the New York Times best-seller. (Sabina Graves, 5/01/23, Gizmodo)

Book-related and General Links:
    -EXCERPT : First Chapter of When We Were Orphans
    -TRIBUTE : Gentle giant :  Malcolm Bradbury has died, aged 68. Kazuo Ishiguro, a former student, recalls a generous and inspiring  teacher (November 28, 2000 The Guardian)
    -INTERVIEW : Wednesday, October 11, 2000 at the Writer's Guild Theatre, Los Angeles (F.X. Feeney)
    -INTERVIEW : A Fugitive from the Past : Mixing memory and desire, Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel [When We Were Orphans] returns to the scene of innocence lost (Atlantic Monthly)
    -Interview: Kazuo Ishiguro (Lewis Burke Frumkes, Writer Magazine)
    -INTERVIEW : with Kazuo Ishiguro (Linda Richards, January Magazine)
    -INTERVIEW : Chaos As Metaphor: An Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro (Peter Oliva, Pages on Kensington)
    -INTERVIEW : Kazuo Ishiguro (ALDEN MUDGE , Book Page)
    -AUDIO INTERVIEW : with Kazuo Ishiguro (Ramona Koval, Books and Writing)
    -INTERVIEW : with Kazuo Ishiguro (LESLIE FORBES, The Globe and Mail )
    - paleview.com : Kazuo Ishiguro Page
    -Kazuo Ishiguro: An Overview
    -Kazuo Ishiguro (Levity.com)
    -Kazuo Ishiguro (1954 - ) (Booker McConell Prize Pages)(Bradley C. Shoop University of Tennessee--Chattanooga)
    -the Internet Public Library : Online Literary Criticism Collection : Kazuo Ishiguro (1954 - )
    -PROFILE : Who Is The Unconsoled? :  A Profile of Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro (Barbara Ohno, Mars Hill Review, Summer 1996)
    -PROFILE : Between two worlds : Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki and raised in the home counties. (Suzie Mackenzie, March 25, 2000, The Guardian)
    -PROFILE : A Case of Cultural Misperception (SUSAN CHIRA, NY Times)
    -PROFILE : An Artist of the World : Born in Nagasaki, raised in Great Britain, Kazuo Ishiguro talks about Japanese culture, English taste and American rock 'n' roll. (Helen M. Jerome, Book Magazine)
    -PROFILE :  In the land of memory :  Kazuo Ishiguro remembers when (Adam Dunn, CNN Interactive)
    -PROFILE : Kazuo Ishiguro (Ellen Uchimiya, Central Booking)
    -LIST : Granta's 20 Best British Novelists, 1993
    -ESSAY : The Remains of the Day : Regret and Repression (Susan Jensen, Suite 101.com)
    -ESSAY : Zen Comedy in Commonwealth Literature: Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day
    -ESSAY : 'Imaginary Homelands Revisited  in the Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro (Rocio G. DAVIS, Universidad de Navarra)
    -ESSAY : Americanizing Japan  (Neena Gill, Road to East Asia :  A journal on contemporary East Asian literature in English, Written by students   at Founders College, York University, June-August, 1997)
    -ESSAY : From submission to resistance (Sarah Tan, Road to East Asia, June-August, 1996)
    -READERS GUIDE : to The Unconsoled (Random House)
    -ARCHIVES : "ishiguro" (NY Review of Books)
    -ARCHIVES : "kazuo ishiguro" (Find Articles)
    -ARCHIVES : "kazuo ishiguro" (Mag Portal)
    -REVIEW : of A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro (Carly Wells)
    -REVIEW : of A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro  (Julie Allen)
    -REVIEW : of The Remains of the Day By Kazuo Ishiguro (MICHIKO KAKUTANI , NY Times)
    -REVIEW : of THE REMAINS OF THE DAY By Kazuo Ishiguro (Lawrence Graver, NY times Book Review)
    -REVIEW : of The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (Jehan Weerasinghe , The Literary Page)
    -REVIEW : of AN ARTIST OF THE FLOATING WORLD By Kazuo Ishiguro (Kathryn Morton, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW : of THE UNCONSOLED By Kazuo Ishiguro (MICHIKO KAKUTANI, NY Times)
    -REVIEW : of THE UNCONSOLED By Kazuo Ishiguro (Louis Menand, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW : of The Unconsoled (Paul Gray, TIME)
    -REVIEW : of The Unconsoled By Kazuo Ishiguro (Lauren Walsh, Metro Active)
    -REVIEW : of The Unconsoled (Cynthia Kirkby, The Brunswickan)
    -REVIEW : of WHEN WE WERE ORPHANS By Kazuo Ishiguro  (MICHIKO KAKUTANI, NY Times)
    -REVIEW : of When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro (Michael Gorra, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW : Pico Iyer: Foreign Affair, NY Review of Books
               When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
    -REVIEW : of When We Were Orphans (Gavin McNett, Salon)
    -REVIEW : of WHEN WE WERE ORPHANS By Kazuo Ishiguro KAZUO ISHIGURO'S LATEST NOVEL EXPLORES THE COMPLICATED AND UNCERTAIN TERRAIN OF THE MIND  (Peter Ho Davies. Chicago Tribune)
    -REVIEW : of When We Were Orphans (Pam Perry, CNN)
    -REVIEW : of When We Were Orphans  (James Wood, New Republic)
    -REVIEW : of When We Were Orphans (Maya Jaggi, The Guardian)
    -REVIEW : of When We Were Orphans (Philip Hensher, The Observer)
    -REVIEW : of When We Were Orphans : Ishiguro's infatuation with Englishness deadens tone of 'Orphans' : The author of `Remains of the Day' looks to the East once again in a perhaps overly ponderous exploration of the impact of history on people's lives (Bradley Winterton, Taipei Times)
    -BOOK LIST : "This is it!"  : The author of "The Blue Flower" picks five novels that rocked her world. (PENELOPE FITZGERALD, Salon)

Comments:

Hello. I saw your comprehensive page on Ishiguro, and thought I'd tell you that your link to my interview is dead.

It can now be found at: www.peteroliva.com/art-kazuo-ishiguro.htm

Feel free to link to that spot, if you wish. Thanks, Peter Oliva

- Peter Oliva

- May-04-2005, 14:17

*******************************************************