Month: December 2015

The Buried Giant-Kazuo Ishiguro

/ a literary explorer

I am not generally a “Fantasy Fiction Fan” but I am a huge Ishiguro fan-scenes from Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day have stayed with me years after their initial reading so I decided to add The Buried Giant to the read column.  Ishiguro is the type of writer that with each endeavor never travels the same road and I love that about his work.

The Buried Giant is a tale of a seemingly straight forward quest-although the exact time frame is somewhat ambiguous-post King Arthur?  There are Britons and Saxons, ogres and dragons, knights and travelers, good and evil. Beatrice and Axl are an elderly Briton couple who decide to leave their village to visit their son.  The world they live in is shrouded in mist (literally)  and they can’t remember their past-did something terrible happen? Should they remember?

Along the way they meet Wistan a Saxon knight on a secret quest-he saves a young Saxon boy ,Edwin, from an ogre.  Edwin is ostracized from his community because he has been bitten by the Ogre(? ).  Wistan asks Axl and Beatrice to help him find a new village for Edwin fearing that his family will murder him a result of their fear and prejudice concerning the boy’s bite.  While traveling all four meet Sir Gawain from Arthurian legend and continue on as a group-we learn about Wistan’s real quest and a bit of his past, the source of the mist, Beatrice and Axl’s trouble, and Gawain’s real role post Arthur.  We encounter Knights and Monks, mythical dogs and dragons as obstacles are placed and overcome.

As in any good quest nothing is exactly what it seems and Ishiguro poses interesting questions along the way-at what price peace? Can hurts be overcome in a relationship?  Is knowledge of the past really all that important?  Can prejudice be overcome?  I am still pondering the exact meaning of the ending and probably will be for some time.

The Last Love Song-Tracy Daugherty

/ a literary explorer

A biography of Joan Didion is not a simple chronicle-Didion is complex, contradictory, caustic and compassionate-just to stay at the beginning of the alphabet. For those that know and love Didion’s work-her perceptive and at times contrary positions on major events and her mastery of prose are a well known commodity. If you have found Didion recently then love and loss in A Year Of Magical Thinking or Blue Nights is your Didion barometer.

I have been a longtime fan of Joan Didion and was excited to tackle a literary biography. The Last Love Song is the life of Didion-her Sacramento childhood, magazine work in NYC, marriage to John Gregory Dunne, Hollywood and screenwriting, adoption of a her daughter Quintana, sister-in-law to Dominick Dunne, relocation to NYC and suffering back to back losses of Dunne and Quintana. Like Didion does in her own work, Daugherty is unflinching in her portrayal of her subject including where fact and fiction blur. I must admit there were several times I did not either agree or understand Didion’s motivations and/or reactions in her marriage or with her family-they rang true but were messy.

As with any discussion of Didion you get a tremendous historical narrative. Daugherty takes you from the Manson murders to Abu Grhaib-I had forgotten about Jerry Brown’s failed presidential bid. Nor had I ever really considered that Didion and Sylvia Plath were fairly close contemporaries-both having worked at Mademoiselle and staying at the Barbizon Hotel in NY. I had and interesting moment of thinking if Plath had lived would they have in fact commented on each other’s works?

After reading The Last Love Song I appreciated Didion even more as a real commentator of our times and Daugherty’s handling of Didion’s life and work-she does not try and explain her subject-she presents her life and her works and lets the reader decide. I imagine that is what Didion herself would do.