When We Were Orphans (2000)

Christopher Banks, a well known detective living in England, reminisces about his childhood in Shanghai. He and his Japanese friend Akira enjoy long hours together of creative play, including creating a detective story explaining Christopher’s parents’ suddenly disappearance. The newly-orphaned Christopher is sent to England to be raised by an elderly aunt. As an adult, he makes it a priority to determine the true story of what happened to his parents.

This is a story of friendship, dedication, curiosity, human relations, betrayal, and a child’s understanding of his parents’ world. In addition, it’s a glimpse into the fascinating life of Shanghai and the interactions of its British, Japanese, and Chinese population. The pace of the novel is outstanding. It starts out very leisurely. As the story develops, the action moves steadily faster. At the bittersweet ending, the novel softly releases the reader with much about which to think. A thoroughly satisfying story with a rich plot, this novel is fine writing, indeed! ( )

I keep starting Ishiguro's books not being quite sure about them -- with people telling me that I won't like them for x and y reasons, or with trepidation born from the wide spread of reviews they get. But there's something about Ishiguro's measured, calm prose that always draws me in. It gives a similarity to all his narrators, but it usually works well with the character he chooses to narrate.

(You may consider the rest of this review spoilery, because while I don't reveal major plot twists, I do talk about the narrator in quite a bit of detail, which for me is the main point of reading this book. So proceed with caution!)

He is also so very good at the unreliable narrator. It surprises me a little that other reviewers saw no hints of Christopher's unreliability earlier in the story: several times someone recounts events that he also remembers which he doesn't contradict in public, but in private he insists it wasn't that way at all. He has excuses for it all, of course: he didn't want to upset the person he was speaking to, they must have constructed some elaborate fantasy because of their loneliness/need for contact... But the clues are all there.

The first half seems very sedate and boring compared to the second half: there is a mystery, but the tone of the narrator makes it difficult to see it as anything urgent. The second half seems to descend almost into absurdity in comparison -- suddenly Christopher comes to seem a lot more important, if everything he's saying is true, and yet there's something very childish about his mission.

Ultimately, Ishiguro is not, for example, Iain Banks, so the narration continues in the same sedate vein, and the end of the novel is almost tender. Apart from a couple of chapters in the second half of the book, this isn't a story where major things happen, and our narrator is not the key player he wants to believe he is.

I really enjoyed it, I have to say. I enjoy Ishiguro's skill with his narrators, and his style is just perfect to keep me reading. It was style more than plot that kept me reading this, that makes it worth it to me, but in this case, the style and the plot go hand in hand. ( )

I did not this novel, mostly because it felt like Ichiguro phoned it in--the memory games, the plot, even the characters all seemed simplistic to me. This is the first Ichiguro novel I have read, so in fairness to him I will have to read at least one other. ( )

On BC I've given away the copy that I owned.
I still would like to read it, found a copy elswhere and have added that one to my TBR :-)

It is a bit ironic that Kazuo Ishiguro is probably the writer in the world that presents the richness of the English langusge in the most beautiful way. Nearly every sentence is colourful, rich and imaginative, while at the same time concise and easily accessible. Ishiguro came to Britain as a 5-year old, so English is his mother tongue, but I still suspect he brings some of his Japanese background into his use of the language. "When We Were Orphans" is the third book I have read from Ishiguro. "The Remains of the Day" is still my favorite, but this novel is nevertheless a considerable achievement and definitely worth reading, way above average. Christopher Banks is one of the world's most famous detectives, but the greatest detective story he encounters is from his own early life, a case he finds it hard to solve. The novel is written in first person singular, so we only get to understand Christopher's world through his own words, and Ishiguro demands a lot from his reader to fill in the blanks. In a way he is turning me as a reader into a detective as well. As opposed to the other novels I have read from Ishiguro, this novel touches upon his own background, as it is set in Shanghai's International Settlement in the early part of last century, with both Chinese, British and Japanese main characters. ( )