''The Unconsoled'' is a novel by
Kazuo Ishiguro
Sir Kazuo Ishiguro ( ; born 8 November 1954) is a British novelist, screenwriter, musician, and short-story writer. Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, and moved to Britain in 1960 with his parents when he was five.
He is one of the most cr ...
, first published in 1995 by
Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel B ...
, and winner of the
Cheltenham Prize
The Cheltenham Prize is awarded at the England, English Cheltenham Literature Festival to the author of any book published in the relevant year which "has received less acclaim than it deserved".
Past winners
*1979: Angela Carter for ''The Blood ...
that year.
Plot introduction
The novel takes place over a period of three days. It is about Ryder, a famous pianist who arrives in a central European city to perform a concert. He is entangled in a web of appointments and promises which he cannot seem to remember, struggling to fulfil his commitments before Thursday night's performance and frustrated with his inability to take control.
Characters
*Ryder – Renowned concert pianist
*Sophie – Gustav's daughter and Boris' mother
*Boris – Sophie's son
*Gustav – Bellhop of the hotel and Boris' grandfather
*Miss Collins – Former lover of Brodsky
*Hoffman – Manager of the hotel
*Mrs Hoffman – Hoffman's wife; has photo albums dedicated to Ryder
*Stephan – Hoffman's son. Also a pianist, yet is insecure about his parents' disapproval
*Brodsky – Washed up conductor the town tries to revive
*Bruno – Brodsky's deceased dog
*Fiona – Train ticketer, Ryder's childhood friend
*Geoffrey Saunders – Another childhood friend of Ryder. Pops up sporadically throughout the town.
*Miss Stratmann – in charge of planning Ryder's concert
*Christoff – Musician disliked by the town
Reception
''The Unconsoled'' was described as a "sprawling, almost indecipherable 500-page work" that "left readers and reviewers baffled".
It received strong negative reviews with a few positive ones. Literary critic
James Wood said that the novel had "invented its own category of badness". However, a 2006 poll of various literary critics voted the novel as the third "best British, Irish, or Commonwealth novel from 1980 to 2005",
tied with
Anthony Burgess
John Anthony Burgess Wilson, (; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993), who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer.
Although Burgess was primarily a comic writer, his Utopian and dystopian fiction, d ...
's ''
Earthly Powers
''Earthly Powers'' is a panoramic saga novel of the 20th century by Anthony Burgess first published in 1980. It begins with the "outrageously provocative" first sentence: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with ...
'',
Salman Rushdie
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (; born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Wes ...
's ''
Midnight's Children
''Midnight's Children'' is a 1981 novel by Indian-British writer Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape with cover design by Bill Botten, about India's transition from British colonial rule to independence and partition. It is a postc ...
'',
Ian McEwan
Ian Russell McEwan, (born 21 June 1948) is an English novelist and screenwriter. In 2008, ''The Times'' featured him on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945" and ''The Daily Telegraph'' ranked him number 19 in its list of th ...
's ''
Atonement
Atonement (also atoning, to atone) is the concept of a person taking action to correct previous wrongdoing on their part, either through direct action to undo the consequences of that act, equivalent action to do good for others, or some other ex ...
'', and
Penelope Fitzgerald
Penelope Mary Fitzgerald (17 December 1916 – 28 April 2000) was a Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist and biographer from Lincoln, England. In 2008 ''The Times'' listed her among "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". ''The Ob ...
's ''
The Blue Flower''.
John Carey, book critic for the Sunday Times, also placed the novel on his list of the 20th century's 50 most enjoyable books. It has come to be generally regarded as one of Ishiguro’s best works.
References
External links
Random House profileRandom House Reading Group Center
1995 British novels
Fiction with unreliable narrators
Novels by Kazuo Ishiguro
Novels about music
Faber and Faber books
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