Christopher Banks is a celebrated detective in 1930s London. But he is driven by the memory of a long-ago mystery - the disappearance of his parents when he was a small boy and the family lived in Shanghai, where his father worked for a trading company and his mother campaigned against the British-run opium trade. Eventually he is able to return to Shanghai to carry out his own researches - but is he prepared for what he will find there?

The main focus of the novel seems to be Christopher's own personality. He is the narrator, with a very distinctive pedantic and dry voice - he lives very much in his own head and is rather an unreliable narrator - all this is quite reminiscent of the butler in The Remains Of The Day.

I found this quite a puzzling book. For a start, it didn't quite seem to hang together. In the first part of the book there were so many things which looked as if they were going to be leading somewhere - for example, Christopher's clearly unreliable memories of his past, the ambitions of the character of Sarah Hemmings, or the recurring references to a growing evil in the world. I didn't feel that any of these were ever really resolved.

There were also some implausibilities which got to me - for some reason, I found the fact that Christopher was meant to be a "famous detective" quite difficult in the context of a supposedly realistic story. Also, the idea that resolving his parents' case would in some way put an end to the world's growing evil would have been fine if it was an indication of his monomania, but other characters also seemed to buy into it.

Perhaps, thinking about it, the lack of resolution was deliberate - the message being that you can think that your life has a certain shape and direction, only to have that completely overturned. There certainly seems to be a theme that you can be implicated in the most awful things without realising. But for me this still ended up a frustrating read, although a very well-written one. ( )

I've made several attempts at reviewing this, and like all Ishiguros I've read in the past, I'm having major troubles. It's hard to put my finger on just what it is about his books that make the impact - but for me, there's no doubt that the impact is there.

For most of the book, you read away, and everything's quiet, simple, reflective. The protagonist narrator, Christopher Banks, is telling us about his life - recent events, memories of the past, detailed recollections of his childhood. Some of the memories are not quite clear, as memories often are. Events jump around in time. Our interest is held, we read on knowing all this is leading somewhere... and then wham. Action. Just in the last third of the book, suddenly it's all stops open and everything happens at once. And we get to the last few pages of the novel, finish it, and suddenly we realise that we have come to know Christopher Banks, really know him - what he's like; how he sees himself; how others see him; what has driven him all through life; his motives, ambitions, needs and ideas. And we care. And the ending, which, if told to us as bare bones would be almost meaningless, hits us hard.

Which brings me to so many other cool things about Ishiguro. One is how detailed his writing is, and yet there are many things he leaves unsaid, especially at the end. It leaves us thinking. His style is very distinctive, and consistent across all three Ishiguro books I've read so far. It's deceptively simple, detailed in an almost pedantic way - yet never once gets in the way of the action.

Another cool thing is that this book is an excellent example of an unreliable narrator. I myself don't know whether some of the things Banks tells us are actually 'true' or not. Banks himself seems to believe it utterly, but is he rewriting his own history so that he can deal with it better? Is he having himself on? Or is his memory simply innacurate? Or is it actually true, and the other people he talks to are the mistaken ones? Even during the action scene in the last third, some things seem almost like dream sequences. Could they really be 'true'?

Then there's the character study. Banks is a fascinating person, and as I said before, we come to know him very well. He's full of flaws, contradictions, and little quirks that make him so vulnerable and so, well, human. In the action sequence, his singleness of purpose is depicted wonderfully well, and... well, I'll stop there before I start on the spoilers.

Most of the authors who I really admire are dead - Ishiguro is one of the few exceptions. Vive Ishiguro!

What I liked:
- The writing; it's like velvet. It's the first book I've read of Ishiguro's and I was impressed.

- Character of Sarah Hemmings; the pages with her sizzle.

- The villian; I won't give away the ending, but the bad guy is truly evil and the final confrontation is memorable.

- Setting in Shanghai; the description of imperialism, corruption, and the opium trade were of personal interest.

- The elements of nostalgia, the fogginess of memory, the 'good and evil' of man, lack or loss of parental love in childhood (for several), and the transience of life ... it all adds up to create a unique feeling.

What I disliked:
- There are aspects of the plot which are unbelievable; the delay in starting his investigation back in Shanghai, the odd expectation and certainty of success, an encounter that you'd expect to be one in a million, etc. Perhaps it's meant to all be symbolic of chasing childhood memories and the elusiveness of recovering the 'good days' and parental love, but I think this is a weak point.

- The personal mission to rescue parents and 'clean up Shanghai' seems disproportinately played up as 'root of evil' (head of serpent) relative to the crisis in the world at large. Likely meant as a microcosm and the need to fight evil on small scale to defeat it on a large scale, but it came across as hyperbole to me.

I would recommend the book and debated 4 stars. I think Ishiguro reached just a little too far but I give him credit for the artistry.

Favorite quotes:
"The evil ones are much too cunning for your ordinary decent citizen. They'll run rings around him, corrupt him, turn him against his fellows. I see it, I see it all the time now and it will grow worse. That's why we'll need to rely more than ever on the likes of you, my young friend. The few on our side every bit as clever as they are."

"I think it would be no bad thing if boys like you all grew up with a bit of everything. We might all treat each other a good deal better then. Be less of these wars for one thing. Oh yes. Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won't be because of great statesmen or churches or organizations like this one. It'll be because people have changed. They'll be like you, Puffin. More a mixture. So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy."

"So identical were their pitiful whispers, the way their screams gave way to desperate entreaties, then returned to screams, that the notion came to me this was what each of us would go through on our way to death - that these terrible noises were as universal as the crying of newborn babies."

"'Those were splendid days', I said. 'We didn't know it then, of course, just how splendid they were. Children never do, I suppose.'"

"But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm." ( )

Christopher Banks is a well-respected British detective who seems to approach other people as he does clues, holding them at arm's length and dispassionately examining them. Yet we soon discover there is one unsolved mystery that haunts this rather aloof soul - the disappearance of his parents in Shanghai many years before. Ishiguro lays out a tantilising trail of clues, many of which are the sketchy remnants of Banks' sometimes misremembered childhood. Though the pace is more languid than is typical of a crime novel, the reader is quickly drawn into the quest for answers.

While not always easy to follow, When We Were Orphans is a beautifully written novel which will satisfy fans of Ishiguro and the crime genre alike. ( )