As the story progresses, we realize how closely the narrator's life mirrors Sachiko's, and we are left to wonder at the mistiness of memory, blending and making everything pale, difficult to distinguish. His novels An Artist of the Floating World (1986), When We Were Orphans (2000), and Never Let Me Go (2005) were all shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. I missed a few words and misunderstood a key part the first time I read it, but the re-reeading was so much better.

Ishiguro's other work includes The Buried Giant, Nocturnes, A Pale View of the Hills, and An Artist of the Floating World . In a story where past and present confuse, she relives scenes of Japan's devastation in the wake of World War II. If there was a mystery somewhere in the novel’s midst, then it was not sufficiently elaborated upon or given sufficient space to breathe for the reader to really care; and, if there was no real mystery, then the point of the novel is partly lost. As you know, I am sure, Ishiguro borrows much here of that Japanese literary tradition which says “hint and suggest, hint and suggest”, delivering nothing of essence or nothing meaningful anyway.Even when Etsuko is pregnant with Keiko in the novel, other people notice that she may not be happy, but Etsuko assures them that she is. I like to think I managed to glean the bulk of the narrative symbolism and meaning, but the clear writing style used really helped to solidify my own understanding and opinions. Home to William Golding, Sylvia Plath, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sally Rooney, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Max Porter, Ingrid Persaud, Anna Burns and Rachel Cusk, among many others, Faber is proud to publish some of the greatest novelists from the early twentieth century to today. Hanging is a theme throughout the book and on two occasions Etsuko claims that she had rope caught around her ankle.

Instead of making the reader doubt the narrator, such qualification about the haziness of memory leads the reader to trust the narrator, after all, she has recognized that she's telling a story, and because she's telling a story, we're willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. The famous 'twist' towards the end is once of the most unusual and clever devices and will make you stop in your tracks and re-think the whole situation. Kazuo Ishiguro’s highly acclaimed debut, first published in 1982, tells the story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter.If you haven't read the book yet please don't read my review as it contains details about the end of the story. On many occasions, we’re presented with gentle probing, the characters polite on the surface, yet persistent and unyielding. It also clearly makes a distinction between one daughter of Etsuko – “westernised” Niki on the one hand, and the second daughter – Keiko, on the other, who apparently found it difficult to adjust to her new life in the UK. But young Jiro, the son of Ogata San and husband of Etsuko, is just the opposite: a self-centred person for whom office work and career define the success. Even if the “memory” theme is more or less convincingly established in the novel, the second theme of copying with trauma by dissociation/mistaken association requires quite a big imaginary leap on the part of the readers.