Rating: 
Summary: Ishiguro's subtlety leads to differing interpretations
Review: Many readers found "When We Were Orphans" to be a beautifully conceived and complex tale of friendship, the bonds of family and romantic love set in an historically fascinating political and cultural time in British-Chinese and Chinese-Japanese relations. I would agree with that assessment, but with this caveat: the complexity of the tale is rooted in the fact that Christopher Bank's emotional development was so stunted in youth that as a man, he was incapable of experiencing true love, familial bonds and friendship. Did we read different books?! Is Ishiguro's mastery of subtlety purposeful, allowing readers to draw differing interpretations just as a piece of contemporary art conveys something different to every viewer? Or did the publisher leave too much on the cutting floor for the sake of making Ishiguro's latest a commercial success?In my opinion, the author was at his personal best in making me feel as though I was an eager third "chap" along for the thrill & satisfaction of the forbidden adventure in Akira's house, a member of the shallow London society set marveling over the incomparable Christopher Banks and a supportive Dr. Watson along for the thrill & satisfaction of the final forbidden adventure through a disorientingly unfamiliar Shanghai outside of the International Settlement. Ishiguro's backdrops are gorgeous. Nonetheless, I felt the story lacked momentum, depth and cohesion for want of character development. Why did Christopher love Sarah, or believe he loved Sarah? I hoped to the end to learn something about this woman that would make me value her as a worthwhile human being. The "bus ride" conversation suggested there was more to her than her social-climbing persona implied, but if there was, we didn't discover it. I concluded that Christopher's attachment to her (when considered in context with his connections to the other important people in his life) had nothing to do with romantic love, but everything to do with her shared status as an orphan and all that imparted to Christopher's capacity for relationships. Why in the world did Christopher adopt a daughter, and where was the evidence of a true paternal bond with her? I initially thought that entire story line was an afterthought, thrown in to create some tie to England to cause Christopher to return. In my final analysis, Jennifer existed simply to reinforce the fact that Christopher felt emotionally secure only with similarly abandoned persons over whom he could assume the role of protector, derived from his single source of self-esteem, being the great detective. Why did Christopher behave so cruelly toward the driver and police officer he persuaded to help him on his incredible and dangerous search for his parents? It stood out as remarkable to me, as I could not find a cogent explanation for cruelty in Christopher's background and did not understand Ishiguro's two-time use of it here. Christopher's arrogance was in keeping with his general carriage when he was in detective mode, and his irrational behavior was understandable because he was so close to solving the mystery and was working under an artificial deadline conveniently presented to him by Sarah's offer, which he insincerely accepted knowing full well he wouldn't leave until "the case was closed," a fact that failed to cause him the inner turmoil a true lover would suffer. But the cruelty...? Why didn't Ishiguro put his perfect prose to paper to describe the panoply of emotions Puffin surely experienced when he met the sought-after informant and finally obtained shocking, psychologically significant answers to life-long questions? I wanted the range of instant responses--rage, anguish and sorrow, toward both the messenger and the various parties involved--and the after-effects--comprehension, acceptance, forgiveness, introspection and yes, even change in Christopher's character. The reunion with Akira was unsatisfying and sparse on detail of either man's feelings; the reunion with his mother was even more sparingly drawn. The denouement was unnourishing, yet by the close of the book, I cared so little for our Mr. Banks that I didn't hunger for more. And perhaps there's the rub.... Have I allowed myself to become so spoiled by modern "literature" that I expect to be spoon-fed heroic characters and neatly tied-up endings and am disappointed and therefor criticize the author when I find nothing to admire about the protagonist and wish for a grand finale? Thank goodness Ishiguro didn't give us the much-discussed homecoming party. Thank you, Mr. Ishiguro, for making me think.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing and befuddling
Review: It was engrossing watching Christopher's childhood in colonial Hong Kong through his eyes at the distance of 20 years or so. This created a marvelous fog. Meanwhile, he's establishing himself as a detective, becoming famous, and trying to develop a relationship with Sarah. But Sarah is ambitious, wants to spend her time with famous, successful, creative people who are trying to save the world. Funny thing is, every man she takes up with mucks up, loses his creative juices; so she leaves him. Christopher watches, as he watches everything else, and continues to recount his life, including a long distance investigation of his parents' disappearance in Hong Kong when he was 7 or 8 years old. Then Sarah hones in on Christopher to get him to take her to a fancy dinner, where she plans to meet her next conquest, not that she knows who he'll be at that point. She meets an aging diplomat who marries her and takes her to Hong Kong on a mission to save the world from the impending WWII. Christopher decides at that point, finally, to return to Hong Kong to find his parents, who he seems to think are still alive and being held by the bad guys. Mind you, this is 20+ years after the kidnapping events occurred. What is there to make him think they are still alive and still being held? In Hong Kong the diplomat takes the by now predictable path; and Sarah turns to Christopher for help. All the other colonial Brits are pretending that the Japanese, who are invading China, won't touch them. And just as Christopher is about to end up with his Sarah, it seems that she's given up a bit of her ambition, he appears to go off the deep end, tells her he'll be right back, then proceeds to go off on a last minute search for Mom and Dad. Honestly, I haven't been able to determine what's being said in the last third of this book, the part in Hong Kong. That's why I'm writing this review, to talk myself through it. The best I've come up with so far is that Ishiguro is describing the fantasy land in which the colonial Brits lived, their attitude toward being in colony, the denial that they'd ever be kicked out or otherwise harmed by the Japanese, that only they could save the world.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting premise...not Ishiguro's best
Review: Again, here's another novel whose parts are more interesting than its whole. Ishiguro's latest is constructed a bit like a jigsaw puzzle - seemingly disparate pieces come together in a plot that appears more densely constructed and complicated than it really is. The narrator, Christopher Banks, is an interesting enough character, particularly as he is relating the events of his childhood growing up in the International Settlement in Shanghai circa turn of the 20th century. The tales of his childhood friendship with Akira, a young Japanese boy who lives next door, are filled with a child's sense of wonder and adventure as are his glimpses of his parents' not quite perfect relationship. The reader gets the sense that there is something rotten going on but is never quite sure what it is until the end. In essence, Ishiguro constructs this novel with a series of impressions - one dimensional glimpses of a world from the perspective of one character who, it turns out, is never really all that informed to begin with. These impressions are by necessity rather fuzzy. (Hence, the novel's blurry cover image.) The reader never feels they are getting the full story. As a literary conceit, this technique is passably effective but it comes at the expense of more satisfying character development. I wanted to know more about Sarah, the mysterious (and one gets the sense, rather tragic)woman who pops in and out of Christopher's life both in London and, later, in Shanghai. Theirs is an involving relationship but Ishiguro suddenly abandons her at what one thinks is going to be a crucial element of the plot. She reappears later in what can only be described as a post script. I also wished Ishiguro could have come up with a more insightful or intriguing way to wrap up the novel's plot. Not to give anything away, but the climax is very conventional, much in the style of an Agatha Christie novel. This reader at least felt rather cheated. I did find Ishiguro's descriptions of wartorn Shanghai very vivid and exciting, particularly Christopher's excursion through the slums ("warrens") of the city. Unfortunately, the premise for this cat-and-mouse excursion is unconvincing as is Christopher's rather clumsy assertion of character. The reader wonders: is he serious, crazy, or just over-wrought at the prospect of finding his parents again? I was turning the pages, wanting to find out what was going to happen next, while at the same time shaking my head because it was all so preposterous. There is something about this novel that didn't feel quite finished, like Ishiguro was in a rush to meet his publisher's deadline and chose to submit his notes and scattered passages of text. In any event, this would make a terrific film along the lines of "The English Patient". In fact, it might even make a better film than a novel. We'll have to see...
Rating:
Summary: Haunting and Ironic
Review: Ishiguro follows J Ballard's similar theme of a childhood in a foreign land. The book explores Christopher Bank's childhood in old Shanghai and continues with his adulthood in 1930s London. Ishiguro explores the loss of identity that Christopher feels, particularly on his return "home", to a place he has never lived, or was even born. The book alludes to the main idea, that we can never go home. Christopher, having never had a typical home, finds it difficult. Ishiguro plays with the idea of restlesness, as Christopher searches in vain for some sense of his past. All in all, a wonderful book, full of amazing imagery that places us in both the glittering aristocratic homes of 1930s London as well as the smoky opium houses of old Shanghai.
Rating: 
Summary: Childhood and Society
Review: All of Ishiguro's fiction is about the disconnect between the narrator's reality and some "objective" reality, where the narrator's perceptions are rooted in a past that no longer exists (and may have been misperceived at the time). The disconnect is especially extreme in "When We Were Orphans". Indeed, it seems fair to ask if the narrator is really in any way the person he presents himself to be. Christopher Banks perceives the world with the eyes of a ten year old addicted to dime novel detective fiction. Is he in fact a detective and an adult? Or, is he rather in fact a ten year old? Or, was the trauma of his youth so extreme that he failed to develop thereafter? Do we all see the world, at least in part, through some kind of prism that distorts the reality that we experience? This certainly is one of the major questions asked in "Orphans". This novel bears some striking resemblances to J.G. Ballard's "Empire of the Sun", which also deals with an English child's experience in China (just before and during WWII)) and, in quite parallel fashion, with the relationship between that child and a Japanese "friend". Is this another deliberate comment of Ishiguro's on perception and reality?
Rating:
Summary: Time and Timing
Review: Kazuo Ishiguro's most recent novel, as with his previous four, brings to the forefront how much our past encroaches upon our present and steers the direction of our future. Charles Banks and the other central figures from Ishiguro's other novels, attempt to recover the past only to find that such attempts are always too late. Nostalgia is an overarching theme in When We Were Orphans and time the literary convention by which the past and present mingle together. Ishiguro's sense of time and timing are a particular forte in his writing. Conversations amongst the elite at societal gatherings are slow and stuffy. Banks often leaves the hob-knobbing guests to engage in one-on-one conversations or seeks the relief of the cold evening air from claustrophobic dinner guests. Most of the novel takes place over the course of seven years in the adult life of Banks but so many pages are dedicated to Banks remembering assorted fragments of his childhood adding another twenty years to the novel. In contrast, in the second half of the novel, the reader is carried overseas from England to the Far East where Banks spends ten days unraveling the mysteries of his childhood. Shanghai of the present is an erratic place with a matching erratic pace. Ishiguro's timing has changed and effectively conveys a war-torn colony that has no patience for a Britain's sense of details and order. In a surrealistic scene that echoes Alice in her Wonderland, Banks navigates through a maze, in his case, an impoverished part of his homeland completely strange and unfamiliar to him. Banks' undefeatable optimism to recover his past sustains his journey through the bombed streets of Shanghai but in the end, as with all attempts to recover one's personal history to set it right, it is long gone. There is no recovery of the relationships with his missing parents. Instead, Charles Banks reconciles with the past by leaving his mother who is as much a stranger to him as he is to her at an institution, and redirecting his future toward an orphan who is grateful to have been found.
Rating: 
Summary: 'When We Were Orphans'-highly recommended
Review: Ishiguro's latest, 'Orphans,' begins on very familiar ground. In fact, a good portion of the book is devoted to the introspection and introspective analysis that often typifies Ishiguro's work. The protagonist explores his past, and specifically his memory of it, to attempt to arrive at an understanding with his present. This journey transforms the novel into a full-scale detective story, giving the novel a compelling and gripping climax to a brilliant story. A most entertaining read.
Rating:
Summary: The Clueless Detective
Review: The narrator and main character of this novel presents himself as a brilliant detective in the mode of Sherlock Holmes. His task is to uncover the mystery of his parents disappearance years before in Shanghai. There is an air of unreality from the very first page, stemming from the narrator's simultaneously self-aware and self-deluded consciousness. We don't believe for a moment that he is a "detective"; that is, he models himself after a fictional detective and his way of being a detective seems entirely literary. Ishiguro designs each sentence to reveal this paradox of the clueless detective, who never perceives himself the way everyone else sees him. He is almost autistic in his social skills! The novel can be either tedious or spell-binding, depending on one's perspective.
Rating:
Summary: hard to categorize, but tremendous literary merit
Review: Having just finished this novel, I'm having trouble pinpointing my thoughts. I still find The Remains of the Day one of the more perfect novels of our generation. Oddly, the "love" story between the narrator and Sarah could come straight out of Remains: Christopher stifles so many urges for her that we cannot help but think of the butler in Remains. As Christopher reads her final letter, we could practically imagine ourselves in the pages of Remains in a similar scene. Add to this side plot the detective element as Christopher turns his detective skills to the mystery of his parents' disappearance and you have several threads to follow in this complex novel. The novel seems to have two distinct parts. The first half or so is the leisurely recounting of the narrator's childhood and his parents' disappearance. The second half turns into a fast paced chase through war torn Shanghai as the quest winds down. As a detective story, we learn from the beginning to question Christopher's trustworthiness as a narrator. For example, he remembers himself as a "normal" student, and is somewhat taken aback when he meets an old friend who describes him as an oddball. There are at least twenty instances when the narrator questions his own ability to remember correctly. Like Remains, we take in the whole book through this narrator's eyes, so we have to learn to see through this filter. There are a few coincidences that are hard to believe towards the novel's end. I think that these take away from the force of the novel as a whole. In short, this novel has beautifully written prose, but as a whole, I found it slightly disappointing even as a big fan of Ishiguro's. Still, I think Ighiguro fans should read it -- perhaps I'm being picky -- Ishiguro is one of my all time favorite writers and this is a terrific book in parts. It just seemed a bit disjointed by the end. Give it a try and then read his other four books.
Rating:
Summary: Parallel realities
Review: What is real is not real, and what is true isn't. The reader becomes involved with the parallel lives of adults and children from the first page of this engrossing novel, set in Shanghai before the Second World War. The looming specter of the impending conflict casts its shadow over most of the action, but the primary focus is on Christopher and his search for his parents, kidnapped when he was a young boy. Christopher's self-delusion and self-absorbtion as an adult prevent him from seeing what is real and what is not: his interpretation of events is based on what he knows to be genuine, but proves to be not genuine at all. Mystery unfolds to present yet another mystery, and not until the last few pages does Christopher's unrelenting view of what he "knows" to be true reveal to him that his life so far has been built on mistaken, and tragic, assumptions. Another winner in this author's body of work.
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