I was looking forward to this book, but was ultimately disappointed; for me, it didn’t live up to the standards of The Remains of the Day or Never Let Me Go.
The protagonist, Christopher Banks, is reminiscent of Stevens, the butler in Remains of the Day, but — even though Ishiguro uses similar narrative techniques — I had difficulty detecting Bank’s humanistic qualities: he was too analytical.
His childhood was spent in Shanghai and his parents were both kidnapped, leaving him as an orphan. Banks was relocated in London and was raised by his aunt. He was an awkward child — though he is gifted at fooling himself — but, as an adult in pre-WWII London, he becomes a celebrated detective (at least by his accounts: how he solves his cases is never revealed). As the novel unfolds, it becomes more and more apparent that his childhood memories are unreliable and he retains an illogical, childish scenario regarding his parents: he is sure that they are still being held captive somewhere in Shanghai. Banks’ motivation comes from a need to fit in and be respected: he longs to experience the approval he was never able to receive from his parents.
There is certainly some captivating writing, and there were sections that were inspired; but, as a whole, I felt that it was the weakest of the Ishiguro novels that I’ve read.
I felt strangely disconnected from the main character. Christopher Banks was separated from his parents, separated from the other characters in the novel, and separated from me, the reader.
I agree with Michiko Kakutani’s analysis of the novel, and her thoughts were summarized well (albeit somewhat harshly) in the final sentence of her review: “…the reader is left with the impression that instead of envisioning — and rendering — a cohesive new novel, Mr. Ishiguro simply ran the notion of a detective story through the word processing program of his earlier novels, then patched together the output into the ragged, if occasionally brilliant, story we hold in our hands.”
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db johnston
almost falling 