i finally finished reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled on Monday – some five weeks after i first started it – and i must say, while the experience was at times trying and even exhausting, i don’t regret having picked up the book in the first place.

i was re-reading Louis Menand‘s review (March 2005) of Ishiguro’s latest book, Never Let Me Go (it was more of an article on the writing style of Ishiguro), and Menand mentions The Unconsoled in passing:

“…the strangeness in Ishiguro’s most imaginative novel, “The Unconsoled,” is ingeniously evoked—by means of literal-minded accounts of things that don’t quite add up—and teasing out the hidden story is the main pleasure of the book. In “The Unconsoled,” the story is never fully sorted out; at the end, we remain in the hall of mirrors.”

in my reading, i was often irritated with dialogues that seemed more like block monologues that went on for pages without any breaks or even paragraph indentations. most of these moments came when various characters expressed their personal greivances or struggles with a detailed and often repetitve account of their life stories. it was frustrating to read about such moments one after another especially when i was clamoring to find out what the point of the entire story was about. a clear, definitive point never seems to be made, and the novel ends in a rather unresolved and abrupt manner.

in retrospect, however, the pleasure of the book is very much in what is hidden behind the tedious dialogue and unceasing attention to seemingly useless details. although you learn a great deal about the mannerisms and likes and dislikes of the protagonist – a world-renowned pianist named Ryder – it is unclear what he seeks to accomplish in visiting a Central European town, where he meets all sorts of characters ranging from the respectable to the pathetic to even the straight-up annoying.

as british as he is, ishiguro seems to mock artistic pretentiousness throughout the novel, never really letting the reader in on the “crisis” that troubles the members of the community but not sparing us the details of their preoccupation and their anxieties concerning an upcoming event that would “decide the fate” of the city. this combination of vagueness and specificity makes the reader care and not care at the same time. by the end, the reader can’t help but to feel annoyance and disgust at these characters who all seem to possess an air of self-importance, whether it is in defense of some personal decision made long ago or their sense of artistic sophistication.

but ishiguro’s point isn’t that these are terrible human beings; it is that human beings, like it or not, are almost always like these characters. and in reading something so literal, often to the point of mundane, ishiguro shows a reflection of human interaction stripped of its romance and drama. the reflection is one that portrays triviality, pettiness, and a preoccupation with the self that makes any attempts at idealism seem pretentious and superficial at best. it is a dark, decidedly post-modern view of human affairs, but it is one that doesn’t jump out at you. you have to really look to find it.