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Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall - Ishiguro, Kazuo

Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

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One of the most celebrated writers of our time delivers his first cycle of short fiction: five brilliantly etched, interconnected stories, in which music is a vivid and essential character.

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PDrizzle

Jan 14, 2010

Extremely Disappointing

I read most of Ishiguro's past work and especially loved Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go and An Artist of the Floating World. I liked his very British formalism and the way he seemed to allow only fleeting impressions of sentiment to enter his stories. The reader had to work to reveal the conflicting emotional undercurrents of these works.

But after reading Nocturnes, I have to wonder if the books I liked so much were really as good as I thought they were the first time around. Every single story in this collection is sappy, overly simplistic and uninvolving. The fact that the bookend stories are set in Venice immediately put a bad taste in my mouth as I consider Venice, despite its beautifully tragic architecture, to be one of the tackiest cities I've had the misfortune to visit. The stories follow in that mold: no sort of insight or sympathetic characters to be found. The fact that two stories revolve around schmaltzy Vegas-style performers whose careers have seen better days makes me wonder if Ishiguro actually likes this type of distinctly American cheese.

I'd warn everyone to stay away from this book. I took little or no pleasure from reading it, and I probably won't look into any future works from Ishiguro. So disappointing that I felt the need to read something of substance immediately afterward to remove the sour memory of Nocturnes from my brain.

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