The Buried Giant

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro  

Imagine yourself in a familiar world with characters like the ones in the fairytales you grew up reading. Borrowed characters like ogres, knights, and dragons are common characters embedded in your psyche. Ishiguro uses familiar and dominant literary landscapes as essential components of The Buried Giant where Ishiguro opts for the known vs the unknown.  

In The Buried Giant Beatrix and Axl, read like two elderly rabbits from a Beatrix Potter illustration, walk hand in hand, navigating the English countryside, often confused by the situation they are in search of the memories taken away by a mysterious mist. As they try to figure out who they are, you wander about with Beatrix and Axl, hoping the cliches and caricatures will eventually lead to a message. Ultimately the narrative strives to illustrate the pain of coping with societal changes that form the collective memory.  

Ishiguro writes with beautiful conviction, and while this novel is well written and complete by any standard of writing and storytelling, The Buried Giant feels too far removed from the modern readers’ collective experiences to have an emotional impact. In addition, the novel outdates itself by using an overproduced genre, with an outmoded surfeit of dialogue to convey the nuances of collective memory and loss. 

No one can doubt or argue the importance or impact of British literature, but it is hard to enjoy a story you have heard hundreds of times.  

It is important to remember that an author like Kazuo Ishiguro is beholden to no genre or experimentation. Knowing this makes The Buried Giant a book you must read and finish because an award awaits you at the end of The Buried Giant