As with a wound on one's own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things

“It's surprising how much of memory is built around things unnoticed at the time” - Barbara Kingsolver.

I jumpstart with this quote because I'd like to examine the inverse of. That is, the malleability of memory, and no one explores it better than Kazuo Ishiguro.

Literary king that he is, I'd recently read his latest pyschological tear-inducer, "Never Let Me Go" and found it hard to think of anything else for weeks following. I was so impressed by Ishiguro's slow, rhymthic style, coupled with intense, surging personal conflict that's enough to really rile up the most docile of book clubs. There is something so telling about what he omits, or... forgets. It stings. You feel personally admonished. Such a swell of emotions was exactly what I wanted and I am forever Ishiguro-san's dearest fan.

Therefore, when at a book store a couple months' back I noticed "A Pale View of Hills" in the bargain bin. I knew nothing of this book except that it was his first and seemingly took place in Japan. I picked it up for a few bucks and left it on my bookshelf for another few weeks.

I picked it up at a time when I wanted to be still. I assumed the book would take some time. That it would have the slow, self-deprecating tone of Japanese genius and that I could savor each word in paced contemplation.

That did and did not happen. The book reads fast.

So fast that I read it in a day. Truth be told, I called in sick to work the next morning because I stayed up all night to finish it. It was really that good.

The story is set in post-war Nagasaki, after a bomb ravaged east coast Japan struggles with its own identity. Our main character, Etsuko, posits herself in real-time, as a mother in England with a proud, stubborn daughter and seemingly nothing else. It's quickly discovered that Estuko lost a daughter, Keiko, to suicide. Her reasons for, and even an exploration into who she is as a person, is lost to the reader. Etsuko is soon flooded with memories that she prefaces as being slightly unreliable. Etsuko then retreats to tell a narrative of her time as a young wife in Nagasaki sometime after the city was destroyed by atomic bomb.

Her recall is weak in hardened details but strong in emotional duress. She references loss (everywhere), showcases hope and forward thinking (under the guise of the noodle shop owner), and recalls with tenderness the man who took her in after she lost all of her family (Ogata-san).

Her memories don't allow for much sympathy, nor are they of a happy variety. Instead, Etsuko dedicates her life to living, almost in survival mode, where it seems no one will allow her to grieve. The shop keeper and Ogata-san remind her of her good fortune, and her husband, Jiro, enslaves her and his lack of love reduces their intimacy to the rubble that once surrounded them. Perhaps as an escape mechanism, Etsuko forms a bizarre and somewhat forced friendship with Sachiko, a brazen single mother to a lost child, Mariko. Etsuko worries for the little girl who skips school, doesn't respect her elders and wanders around with a lost and angry affect.

Sachiko and Etsuko somehow form a friendship, although the two women seem very self-serving in their engagement in the friendship. Sachiko bullies and coaxes Etsuko to pry into her personal life, at times behooving her ask embarrassing questions. Etsuko, in turn, seems disinterested in discovering the truth about Sachiko and instead filters all of her energy into Sachiko's daughter, who spends most her days and nights alone, while Sachiko works at the noodle shop and "entertain's" her American boyfriend.

There are so many subtle nuances to this story, that to disect them all would be to write forever. So I will focus mainly on my interpretation of the book, which many disagree with and which Ishiguro himself as deemed a "moot point". But because the book resonated so well with me, this is how I see it:

The book is about nothing more than memory and our interpretation thereof. Sachiko is not a person in Etsuko's life, but a distorted, "new" memory of herself. As such, Sachiko is Etsuko. Mariko (Sachiko's lost daughter) is Keiko. Here's how this works out:

Etsuko recalls these memories at a time when some responsibility and memory of her deceased daughter, Keiko is called to light. It's my belief that Etsuko conjures up a false memory of Sachiko in punishment and to recall her sins. It may be that Etsuko couldn't deconstruct the ways in which she destroyed her own daughter. She is filled with immense guilt, especially when she admits to her living daughter, the one with an "American" name, "I knew moving here would be hard for her. But I did it anyway."

She is basically copping to her own daughter's death. If you really look at the book, Sachiko is so ethereal. There is no rationale for who she is, where she came from, why she left or when if she was. Sachiko's cousin is an excellent projection of Ogata-san. Sachiko had to leave, despite the tenderness from that part of the family. If you look at the two there are so many overlapping similiarities it stands to reason that they are one of the same. Especially when Etsuko recalls, near the close of the book, her one nice memory with Keiko, on the hills. The only other reference to hills was with Mariko, up top, the day that she climbed the tree and seemed, at least marginally, at peace.

Irregardless of what Ishiguro intended, the potentcy of the memories and their hazy status, thereof, begs to be examined. Ishiguro did a stand-up job calling to question memory, who it really belongs to and how quickly it may be re-shaped. It's a lifelong struggle for all that he encapsulated in this, his beautiful first work.