I read two very different books recently. The first was The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. In reading a book review of it on NPR, I was reminded that he is the author of Remains of the Day, which I really liked. The story is set in medieval England sometime after the death of King Arthur. A couple of the characters from that tale figure into this story. There are ogres and a dragon and sprites, which make it a fantasy. There is fog which causes memory loss, which makes it something of an allegory.
You’re thinking, “SHE read this book??” Yes. And, I don’t know what to tell you except that I liked it a lot. I liked what it had to say about memory, forgetting and its impact on forgiving. The NPR reviewer says “there might be a powerful novel in all this mythic material, but I couldn't quite find it.” On the contrary, I think Ishiguro’s quiet style IS powerful and beautiful.
The other book was Best Boy by Eli Gottlieb, a story narrated by a 50-something autistic man, who has spent much of his life institutionalized. His circumstances are sad, but he is resilient. There were multiple characters in this book that were drawn very clearly. The book offers a double vision of them – through the eyes of Todd who takes them, for the most part, at face value and then through our own understanding of murky, self-interested motives.
