A Pale View of Hills

No one does a repressed melancholic unreliable narrator like Ishiguro. I admire how so many of his trademarks were already so well-established and so well-done in his first novel.

There are so many themes in the book worthy of deeper dissections in an English literature class, in particular the setting of Nagasaki and the characters' occasional references to how everything is different, and not just because of the ordinary passage of time. I also enjoyed the small mundane details of everyday life, drinking tea, putting on your shoes, and preparing meals and so on.

The plot destines itself to multiple interpretations and if you're someone who welcomes open-ended answers, Ishiguro and this book is for you.

A Japanese woman living in Britain recalls a summer in Nagasaki not long after the atomic bomb was dropped.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel is beautifully written, although I can’t say I fully understood it. The story is narrated by a Japanese woman, Etsuko, whose older daughter just committed suicide. This tragedy seems to have awoken memories of a summer in Nagasaki (Etsuko lives in Britain now) not long after the bombing, when Etsuko was pregnant, presumably with the daughter who has just died. She recalls a woman she briefly knew who lived near her and also had a daughter, a little girl who seems withdrawn and damaged by her experiences during the war. Ishiguro is even more subtle than usual, and a lot of the details of Etsuko’s show more life are left to the reader to fill in. For instance, it is difficult to tell which of Etsuko’s memories are of this other mother daughter and daughter, and which are of her own daughter. But mostly, this short novel is about how Japan was irrevocably changed after the war and how the various characters fail to deal with that change, just as Etsuko ultimately fails to deal with the death of her daughter. In that aspect, this is a very moving story indeed. show less

A Pale View of Hills is Ishiguro's first novel and already you can see the subtle, enigmatic writer that always surprises.

This novel is narrated by Etsuko, a Japanese woman who is living alone in Britain. Her younger daughter, Niki, comes to visit her and this seems to spur all sorts of memories for her. Through these memories, portions of Etsuko's life are slowly and incompletely revealed. We learn that Etsuko lived in Japan during WWII and obviously experienced a lot of trauma, though there are no details revealed. She was married to a man name Jiro and had his child, Keiko, while she was in Japan. At some point she left him to move to Britain with a man, taking Keiko with her and later having Niki with the British man. We also learn show more that Keiko committed suicide. Etsuko's British husband has died and we never find out what happened to Jiro. All of these details are revealed subtlety and out of order, so it takes a while to piece together the story. It is all interspersed with Etsuko's memories of her interactions with a woman named Sachiko and her daughter Mariko. Etsuko at that point was married to Jiro and pregnant. She is judgmental of Sachiko's parenting and her decision to leave Japan to go to America with Frank, a man who does not seem very dependable.

There is definitely an "unreliable narrator" element to this book. Etsuko is damaged, not only from the war, but also by her daughter's suicide and probably her marriages as well. It is hard to tell how much truth we can take from her memories. And then there is a twist at the end (no surprise there to readers of Ishiguro's other novels) that makes the reader wonder how much of Sachiko's actions were really Sachiko's and how many of those actions were really Etsuko's actions projected on to Sachiko. It's all rather mysterious and haunting.

What I found interesting about this book is that as I was going along reading/listening I kind of kept wondering "where in the world is this going"? It is such a simple story and doesn't really seem to have a point - just the memories of an older woman that don't really tie together. But then in the last few minutes of the book, Ishiguro throws in a new idea and all of a sudden I want to read the book again with my eye on it differently. show less

I feel like someone could and probably already has written a dissertation on this book. It's so good, so layered, with multiple possible interpretations of the actual facts of the story. The writing is crisp and there's an element of suspense (or wtf is going on?) that makes it a very quick read. The post-WWII Japan setting is amazing and educational. There's so much to think about politically. How does a country completely restructure itself and who gets left behind in the process? There are the themes of east vs. west, individualism vs familial bonds, meaning in motherhood, feminism, aging, grief, good vs evil, processing of the past... Every bit of this book is perfection, that fucked up, twisted ending included.

"I was thinking about someone I knew once. A woman I knew once."
By sally tarbox on 29 April 2013
Format: Paperback
A deceptively simple and beautifully written work that had me hooked to the end. Then I found myself poring over other reviews and blogs to see what other readers had made of the story.
It opens with a middle aged Japanese woman living in England, being visited by her younger daughter. There's a great feeling of reserve, greyness, a strange family dynamic, and we want to know more. As they mention the elder daughter's recent suicide, we get the weirdly restrained
"Did you really expect me to be there?" she asked. "At the funeral I mean."
"No, I suppose not. I didn't really think you'd come."
"It did upset me, hearing about her. I show more almost came."
"I never expected you to come."
Gradually our narrator recalls a period in her early married life, when she was living in Nagasaki shortly after the war and expecting her first child. She strikes up a friendship with Sachiko, a woman who couldn't be more different from herself. For while the narrator is a dutiful middle-class wife, her friend has been brought low by the war, and is living a rough and ready lifestyle, consorting with American Frank with the (doubtful) hope he'll take her back to the States, and paying very little attention to her young daughter Mariko...
Read and enjoy, try to pick up on the clues on the way, then see what you think of it. It's absolutely haunting. show less

Hasta ahora, las novelas que había leído de Ishiguro no es que fuesen muy japonesas, precisamente; todo lo contrario, sus novelas son más inglesas que las escritas por ingleses de más rancio abolengo. Porque Ishiguro, nacido en Nagasaki en 1954, lleva viviendo en Inglaterra desde 1960, y ha sabido adaptarse a la perfección.

'Pálida luz en las colinas' fue la primera novela que publicó, y en ella están muy frescas las imágenes del Nagasaki de los años cincuenta. Se puede decir que es muy japonesa, no sólo porque su gran mayoría está ambientada en esta ciudad, sino también porque los sentimientos y emociones se tratan de manera muy sutil y profunda. La historia tiene como protagonista a Etsuko, que vive actualmente en show more Inglaterra, y que hace poco tuvo la visita de Niki, su hija. Sobre ambas todavía está presente el suicidio de Keiko, hija y hermana respectivamente, algo que lleva a Etsuko a recordar ciertos días de sus vida en Nagasaki, cuando conoció a Sachiko y a su hija Mariko, vecinas suyas. En esa época Etsuko estaba embarazada de su primera hija, Keiko. No sabe por qué le vienen estos recuerdos, en los que también aparecen su suegro Ogata y su marido en aquel momento, Jiro, pero donde dejaron huella especialmente Sachiko y la pequeña Mariko, personajes enigmáticos. Y sobre todo ello, planea la sombra de la bomba atómica que cayó durante la guerra, en un Japón que intenta llevar esperanza a sus ciudadanos. Esta es una parte interesante de la novela, el Japón tradicional en contraposición al Japón que quiere occidentalizarse.

Pero todo el peso de la historia recae sobre Etsuko y de cómo ve ella a las personas que la rodean. Y aquí es donde brilla Ishiguro especialmente, en la caracterización de personajes. Sin duda, 'Pálida luz en las colinas' es una gran novela, que ya deja entrever la maestría que alcanzará Ishiguro con los años. show less

Can you love a book and still say you are not sure you KNOW what happened in it? That is the feeling I came away with from Pale View of Hills. The story is told by Etsuko, a Japanese woman post WWII living in England and mourning the recent suicide of her daughter. She tells us the story of her life in Japan when she is presumably carrying the now deceased daughter, her first husband there and a friend, Sachiko and her daughter Mariko. We are also given glimpses into Etsuko's relationship with her daughter by her English husband, who is also now deceased.

The story seems very straightforward, although Etsuko tells us from time to time that she may not be remembering it properly. By the end, we are fairly sure that is the one point on show more which she is correct. Ishiguro turns the book on its head and leaves us wondering what is the truth and who is Etsuko truly and struggling with a vague sense that her daughter's suicide might have much more to do with her than we suspected.

If I had any wish to alter this book, it would be that Ishiguro had written another 200 pages and told us the entire story. I felt like I wanted to sit down and write my own version to fill in all the blanks. I think this was intentional on his part and that it is a large part of his success that the disorientation that the characters feel, we feel as well. The characters become so intertwined that it would be impossible at the end to say who did what and who was who. I even wondered if the child Etsuko is carrying is truly the deceased daughter, or if she has confused her life and Sachiko's life and blurred all the lines between Keiko and Mariko.

This is a book that I would love to discuss with a group and have other opinions bounced about. I can see how it might have dozens of different interpretations if dozens of people were reading it together. I was not disappointed, and considering this was Ishiguro's first novel, I think one must tip the hat to his enormous story-telling talents. [b:The Remains of the Day|28921|The Remains of the Day|Kazuo Ishiguro|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327128714s/28921.jpg|3333111] remains his masterpiece, in my opinion, but I am happy to list him as a favorite author and remain enamored of his work. show less