Book Review: A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro

4/5 stars. I have heard a great deal about this book in the last couple of years. It is the first novel by Ishiguro, written in the early 1980s, and tells the story of a mother whose oldest daughter recently committed suicide. Her younger daughter comes to visit and causes her to reflect on her life before she had children, while living in Nagasaki, Japan, in the early 1950s. Historical fiction is a fascinating genre for me, and Japanese historical fiction has been on my TBR quite a bit in the last couple of years, having read quite a few of Haruki Murakami’s early works last year, and a couple of other Japan-centered magical realism novels by other authors.

For this to have been his first novel, Ishiguro writes exceptional prose and his descriptions take the reader into the world of mid-20th Century Japan. I finished this short novel very quickly, reading about 1/3rd of it at each session. The story is interesting, if a bit tragic and sad, yet still hopeful in the end, for both the mother and her younger daughter. I would like to have seen more of Japan in the 1950s, but what we get is fascinating and reflects the changing times for the Japanese people, post-WW2 and verging on their technological revolution. I like Ishiguro’s commentary on pre-WW2 Japan and how indoctrinated the people were by the country’s leadership. Thinking about this past creates a magnificent counterpoint to the current conditions of the world, and how much of history has an unfortunate ability to repeat itself.

I look forward to reading more of Ishiguro’s works and recommend this novel as a wonderful starting point with this Nobel Prize-winning author.