By Kazuo Ishiguro, 2015
Like many of Ishiguro’s novels, this one involves a form of quest epic, though it is more explicit and classic than in his other novels. But instead of a realistic setting in the recent past, this one has a magical setting in Britain’s Arthurian past. The plot, the setting and the language are all mythic in form, but the object of their quest is uncertain. It’s never clear what anyone is seeking, and everyone is deceiving the others with their own secrets. The one constant is memory. The characters all seem uncertain about their past, and talk about a magical mist from the dragon Querig’s breath that seems to weaken their memory.
The central storyline involves Beatrice and Axl, an aged and loving couple who want to reunite with their son. Axl remembers a vague story involving a woman, but Beatrice does not or perhaps she prefers not to. She thinks she will remember the way to find their son, but Axl isn’t sure she will. They are both afraid that when they are tested they won’t remember enough of their story together to prove their love. When they recover their son’s story, it becomes tragic.
In their travels, they meet cryptic boatmen, corrupt monks, seductive maidens, a Saxon warrior, an Arthurian knight, a haunted but ambitious youth and several fearsome beasts. They remember things about themselves that may or may not be true. Interestingly, while everyone fears the dragon Querig, who seems to be responsible for the mist of memory, it takes very little to destroy it and begin to restore memory. But recovering the memories still takes work and it does not resolve the characters’ questions.
This subverts the conventional love story – instead of a young hero and heroine overcoming obstacles, the mature love of Beatrice and Axl is the central story and the main obstacle is their fear of losing their love by forgetting their times together.
The story also undermines some key English myths. The Saxon warrior Wistan challenges the common picture of Arthur as a wise and honourable king. In violation of Arthur’s agreement with the Saxons, the Britons slaughter the Saxon women and children. Sir Gawain, who joins the quest for a while, thinks the memory mist is Arthur’s strategy to prevent Saxons from taking revenge. Wistan wants to restore people’s memories so that they will take vengeance on the Britons. He is a heroic and sympathetic character even though his quest is for a violent uprising by a defeated people.
This has resonance with contemporary national struggles: the victors tell their own stories and deliberately wipe out memories of their enemies’ history. But even if useful, this strategy comes at the cost of integrity and truth. And of course it’s not effective because defeated peoples don’t forget their history even when it is buried (presumably the buried giant of the title). Instead, the victors lose the truth of their own stories and distort their own values when they suppress those of other people.
Putting all of this in mythic terms has the effect of abstracting it. The formal story-telling language makes a reader slow down and wonder about the magical mist and the mysterious creatures. The wealth of stories included in the main narrative takes a reader in different directions trying to fit it all together. What are we to make of the truth-seeking boatmen? Or the nasty beasts that the travellers encounter? Or of the dangers of the abbey? Or the entrancing women? Like the myths of Gawain and the Arthurian tales, they are open to various interpretations while they keep the story moving from one tale to another. None are explained, but all are somewhere between the world of lost memories and the dangers of the traveller’s journeys.
Ishiguro puts all of this together brilliantly. The prose is simple, descriptive and poetic. It has an oral tone that sounds like a bard telling an epic story. The characters are sympathetic, and heroic when called on. The novel is a fascinating and enjoyable creation of an epic myth around contemporary themes of identity, memory, aging and politics.
