A pale view of the hills by Kazuo Ishiguro reads like an ode to grief. It juts like ice from a cold sea with so much beneath that I can only infer. Characters do not say everything they mean, dialogue is two characters talking to a wall.
Scenes are strange & all of this on a backdrop of post world war 2 Nagasaki.
The end of chapter ten almost confuses. Etsuko, the narrator speaks of the last time she sees her friend, Sachiko, mother of Mariko then she switches to a time before she left Japan with her daughter Keiko. Their interaction is so similar to a previous incident between her and Mariko that at first I am lost. The connection between Keiko and Mariko is suspicious and I wonder what happens to Mariko after seeing those cats drown.
The relationship between Jiro and his father Ogata-san as observed by Etsuko is incomplete. Jiro carries implied anger and abuse in the way he nonchalantly ignores his wife and father. The relationship between parents and children can also be seen in how Sachiko behaves with Mariko.
What about Ogata-san's bewilderment about the article of his former mentee, about how their style of teaching failed the country? He cannot seem to understand what he did wrong or if the young man is right. It is in this place that the gap between the old order and new is properly examined.
& the way the book ends, emotions still tangled and unresolved as if saying, & this is true of life, the grieving continues & the living keep on living, keep on getting used to absence, to ghosts that appear like a lantern lengthening shadows at dusk.
Kazuo Ishiguro in this slim volume just blew my mind. Good writing will never stop hammering away and chipping the carapace we have built around our spirits. It breaks us.