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A review by chrissie_whitley
When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
2.0
2.5 stars
Yikes. Not my Ishiguro.
My experience with Ishiguro has been that his books are beautifully imagined — with particular care taken to get the characters just right — and they could be described as "Ishiguro tries his hand at _____." Now, that might be spec-fic, sci-fi, classic, or fantasy, all of which I've loved or really liked, but "Ishiguro tries his hand at detective novels" was not a winner for me.
Basically, a grown man named Christopher Banks, who has become a renowned private investigator, heads back to Shanghai hoping to find out what happened to his mother and father, who disappeared some twenty years earlier, leaving him orphaned. Interspersed are Christopher's memories and the path to this present time in his life.
Ishiguro's spare writing style didn't match well with the tone or subject matter. Far more plot-driven than what I've found so far with his work, but Ishiguro seems to try and hide the plot behind the building of the main character's childhood and adulthood events that lead to this desperate search. This one was a bud that just never blossomed.
Yikes. Not my Ishiguro.
My experience with Ishiguro has been that his books are beautifully imagined — with particular care taken to get the characters just right — and they could be described as "Ishiguro tries his hand at _____." Now, that might be spec-fic, sci-fi, classic, or fantasy, all of which I've loved or really liked, but "Ishiguro tries his hand at detective novels" was not a winner for me.
Basically, a grown man named Christopher Banks, who has become a renowned private investigator, heads back to Shanghai hoping to find out what happened to his mother and father, who disappeared some twenty years earlier, leaving him orphaned. Interspersed are Christopher's memories and the path to this present time in his life.
Ishiguro's spare writing style didn't match well with the tone or subject matter. Far more plot-driven than what I've found so far with his work, but Ishiguro seems to try and hide the plot behind the building of the main character's childhood and adulthood events that lead to this desperate search. This one was a bud that just never blossomed.