The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro - Paperback

Nice product.

I loved ‘Never let me go’. Maybe that’s because I read books as they are. I don’t look for allegories , deeper meanings or anything much beyond the writing. So I embarked on this novel. And it was hard work. The style was stilted and formal. Everyone spoke much the same so you had to ensure which character was talking. The format is very episodic, except each episode doesn’t necessarily start at the beginning so you have to hang on a few pages to find out where the character/ animal/ etc came from.So I actually found it very difficult if not impossible to engage with the players. I say players because elements of it reminded me of those old computer games called something like ‘adventure quest’ , where you had to ask the right questions to get the right answers. Only it took the whole book for them to ask the right questions.At the end I found myself admiring the quality of the writing, the construction of the plot but totally missing what the purpose of the book was. I was astonished by the rave reviews and wondered if there was another version of the book I had not been allowed to read.

Axl and Beatrice are searching a land covered in a memory-stifling mist for a son they have lost some years ago. On the way there will be knights and monks, trials and tribulations, and creatures of legend until they finally have to face the truth about themselves.It is quite extraordinary that a significant number of readers and critics have rejected this book on the basis that it is a fantasy novel – fairly low Arthurian fantasy at that. How can you be snobby about Kazuo Ishiguro? The man is a genius!Still, it is there loss, because The Buried Giant is both brilliantly written literary fiction and one hell of a story. This is one of the best portrayals of married love that I have ever read, and the central characters are utterly convincing. And, of course, this is Ishiguro, and nobody does heartbreak better than he.This book takes you on an extraordinary adventure then brings you to somewhere you never expected but always should have. The end of the book kept me thinking for days and is deeply touching. You owe it to yourself to read this masterpiece.

I loved 'The Remains of the Day' and 'Never Let Me Go'. Having read the reviews, I thought this book sounded interesting, possibly difficult to understand, but certainly worth persevering with.And in the beginning it was. I got the point about memories and so on very early on, and I began to engage with the main characters. But the book just never went anywhere. It carried on and on and on, with every character sounding the same and never being developed, and the style being so pedestrian it was practically asleep. I was absolutely determined to finish it, but I found myself counting the pages towards the end, and wondering what was the earth shattering revelation that was about to be revealed, at least according to reviewers. Well, all I can say is, it wasn't earth shattering at all, and by the time I got there I was simply bored. I was also disappointed.I looked up the book online to check I hadn't missed or misunderstood some point. I hadn't. I simply don't think the book made its point particularly well, and it wasn't interesting.Kazuo Ishiguro is a writer I thought I liked, a lot. But not this book.

Having loved all Kazuos work, I was surprised to discover that I’d missed this one. Yet again he writes with magnificent skill, taking you back to the time, customs and style of speech of the era he writes about. The style of language and communication is perfectly in keeping with this period of history and not at all stilted or exaggerated as some of the more negative reviews imply. I was gripped both with the story and the characters and really looked forward to picking it up again to continue reading. The Buried Giant is a mythical story about love, war and loss written sometimes with great humour and at other times a depth of feeling. The connection between the past and the present was a continual theme brought to a moving and thought provoking end. One of his best but then I’m a huge fan of this literary genius. Absolutely loved this book cover to cover and the story and emotions it stirred will stay with me for a long time.

I am a massive fan of the fantasy genre. Meryvn Peak's Titus Groan and Gormenghast are my all time favourite novels. But this book was so poorly written, and had such a leaden pace that i found i could not get past the first thirty pages. It reads like an adult telling a long-winded story to a small child. In the first thirty pages all that happens is that an old couple decide to leave their village. Now Peak loved to describe things in detail but his penmanship was a glory. Ishiguro's penmanship by contrast is an utter chore. Andrzej Sapkowski can entertain you more with one page of his Witcher novels than thirty of Ishiguro's banal pages. If you are after a good fantasy set in ancient Britain then i heartily recommend The Deepest Sea by Charles Barnitz. Don't waste your time on this book unless you need aid in getting to sleep. Life is too short.