What I have been reading most recently?
'When We Were Orphans', published in 2000, is Kazuo Ishiguro's fifth novel. Ishiguro has lived in Britain since he was five and is considered one of the country's leading novelists.
'When We Were Orphans' has similarities with 'The Remains of the Day', Ishiguro's third novel, in dealing with a lost way of British life. In 'The Remains of the Day', it was the great country house, here it is the international settlement in Shanghai. The main character, Christopher Banks, grows up there in the Edwardian era but leaves when his parents mysteriously disappear. He returns in the embattled period of the late 1930s to try to solve the mystery of that disappearance. A Japanese connection is provided by the character of his boyhood friend, Akira, who seems to reappear as a soldier he meets when he returns to Shanghai.
Perhaps what seems difficult to accept at times is the 'stiff upper-lip' attitudes of the central character. Even in the midst of the fighting between Chinese and Japanese forces, he may bluster with impatience but he remains determinedly true to these attitudes. In this way, he has much in common with the character of the butler in 'The Remains of the Day'. Although many admire the preciseness with which Kazuo Ishiguro shows these characteristics, there is an inevitable remoteness and wish for greater empathy.