The Unconsoled

Having read and very much enjoyed Ishiguro’s best known novels (and most recently “Klara and the Sun”), I happened to hear of the Unconsoled on the Backlisted Podcast, where it was hailed as a masterpiece. What can I say? It is certainly extremely original and I am not sorry I took the trouble to read it to the end. Having said that, I have no idea what it was really about nor what the reader is expected to make of it. I am puzzled above all by the fact that while, throughout its 500-odd pages, I kept asking myself what on earth is going here? and why am I reading this?, nonetheless I can say it is a very easy-to-read novel, and one I mostly enjoyed. The narration is down to earth and conversational – in fact, much of the narration emerges from the mouths of the endlessly garrulous characters rather than from the author himself. In some places, the story is extremely funny. The plot, insofar as there is one, is as follows. An Englishman called Mr Ryder (we never discover his first name) who is a world-famous concert pianist arrives in an unnamed Central European city to give a performance. If there is a plot, I have no qualms about spoiling it – he never gets to perform, because he is continually side-tracked by his involvement in the problems, mostly emotional but in some cases organisational, of the locals he encounters. The novel has the texture of one of those dreams which leave you feeling uncomfortable, as if they are a warning you are losing control of your daily life – unable to find where you parked the car at the end of a football match, or turning up to give a lecture without your notes or the USB with your PP slides. While I cannot even attempt to say what the novel is really about, there are a number of salient features which are presumably meant to be linked: 1. Scenes set in the hotel involving awkward interactions with staff reminded me very much of the world of Thomas Mann, whose characters are often similarly uneasy in their hotels 2. Although most of the characters other than Ryder himself have Germanic or Nordic names, they all speak colloquial English, so none of the misunderstandings are related to language 3. The characters whom Ryder encounters apparently randomly immediately spill their life-story or their emotional problems out at length from the outset. This instant imtimacy becomes ever stranger as the novel progresses 4. Everything in the novel is ephemeral, contingent, volatile: location, moods, timelines. As in a dream, the details that are in focus are vivid, everything else is vague or absent. 5. The way the characters spill out their emotions unprompted suggests we’re in a world without privacy or perhaps with no need of privacy – possibly because for all the (mostly frustrated) passion and marital tensions Ryder observes, sex is totally absent from the novel. It is as if all the characters are driven by emotion devoid of any physical drives whatever. The Backlisted folk advocated reading and rereading this book, but it is telling that having read it twice, these cognoscenti were still unable to explain the title. Maybe I too will reread this book some day….maybe…

It's fascinating and boring at the same time, and also could have been half as long as it was. I'm almost half certain the author meant for it to convey the horror of remembering and mixing up memories all at the same time.,

Loveky