Rating: 
Summary: Confusing style
Review: There are several interpretations of this book. As a mystery this is very disappointing because we are never given enough information to understand why Christopher comes to the conclusions that he does and the plot of the book is so illogical. Why, in the midst of a battle, would a police officer offer to help on such a foolish mission as Banks is on? However, the ending is a perfect who-would'a-thought-that ending. As study of a clearly disturbed mind that is pursuing a foolish quest in a surreal setting, the book is more acceptable. At that point one could assume that these events don't exactly happen as stated, but are an interpretation of Christopher's mind as his mind replays his solving his parents disappearance as he did in childhood. However, this interpretations doesn't play well with reality of the ending. Did we go from surreal to brutal reality with the turn of a page? Did Christopher recover that quickly? Another interpretation is that the story is symbolic of England's imperialistic attitude of the world during that era. Christopher is representative of all the negative side of England, making sympathetic comments about the living conditions of the poor, yet being nonplused by the screams of the dying. He treats the Asian natives as poorly as any other European whom he is pretending to criticize. I did not rate the book highly because there were too many events in the book that just couldn't happen. But if this was a trip into a troubled mind, than the shifting back to a standard format of a mystery didn't go smoothly.
Rating: 
Summary: What's Ishiguro up to?
Review: I admit that I have not yet finished the book, and so perhaps should reserve judgement, but I won't. There are so many absurdities, unexpainable assumuptions made by the characters, both major and minor that I finally concluded that Ishiguro was attempting to write somthing Kafkaesque and, for me, only succedding in making Banks and many of the other charactrers appear deliberately obtuse. Like other reviewers, I am terribly bored by the book, which is admittedly very elegantly written, but I am put of by its abusurdity, which is tiresome and not at all compelling.
Rating:
Summary: Slow, overhyped, and unbelievable
Review: I just finished reading Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans. It was well written. The dialogue and descriptions of people and places were excellent. The ending was shocking, surprising, and fast-paced. That being said, I regret that I bought it and would not recommend it to anyone else. The plot was thin, perhaps because it was stretched over too long a book. Until the last tape the pace was too slow for a mystery. A few leaps backward and forward in time are acceptable but he made so many it became a bit difficult to follow the story line. Worse, he sometimes jumped from "A" to "C" in situations without going through "B," or even referring to it in "C" so we knew how he got to "C." An example of this was his acceptance of, and seeming agreement with, the assumption of the city councilman, his old schoolmate Morgan, and the Chinese family in his old home, that Christopher's parents were not only alive but still being held prisoner in Shanghi. We were not told about anything Christopher had discovered either in London or after arriving in Shanghi that would have justified that assumption. In fact, we were not told about anything he had discovered in England that would indicate he had reason to believe his parents were still in Shanghi or even still alive. Yet there is an implication that he had discovered something, some lead or information that might make a trip to Shanghi worthwhile. The great buzz that his arrival in Shanghi created and his VIP treatment was not believable. Even if he were a British detective of Sherlock Holmes' stature there would not be any reason for people living in Shanghi to be so impressed by him or to be so interested in his case---especially since the case was a personal one involving his parents. With the civil war raging around them and the Japanese invaders possibly about to seize Shanghi it was ridiculous to have some of the residents saying that they thought he could help with that situation. A couple incidents of chance meetings would be believable because they do happen in real life. However, there are more than a lifetime of lucky chance meetings in this book. Finding the old Chinese detective through Morgan's recollection of him as a street bum, finding his childhood Japanese friend as a wounded Japanese soldier who will again act out the rescue of Christopher's parents, and finding the house of the old blind man through the driver Sara provided were all a bit too much. That last one especially because the driver was described as young, maybe even 15 years old, but he remembered the old blind actor from decades before and even knew where he lived. Unbelievable. Also, the 1916 kidnapping incident he asked the former Chinese detective about (to locate the house where his parents might be held) would have been long before his parents were kidnapped. The probability that they were held in the same house from the time they were kidnapped until Christopher was a grown man with an international reputation (several decades?) was too small to make that whole part of his quest a logical course of action. Even before he met them, the Chinese family living in his old home had apparently accepted that they would have to give it to because it had been his family home, even though the British company rather than his family owned it. Not believable. This man who derided the foreigners in China for the way they treated the Chinese (They had no sense of shame about it.) berated and browbeat his Chinese driver and the Chinese lieutenant, both of whom risked their lives to help him find the house he wanted to locate. That destroyed much of my sympathy for him. The Chinese lieutenant would not be likely to know about or care about Christopher's case and would be extremely unlikely to desert his post to lead Christopher to a house near or even behind the Japanese lines. Similarly, although he was supposed to be dedicated to finding his parents, Christopher quickly decided to run off with to Macau with another man's wife (shame?) but then just as quickly abandoned her at the waterfront (more shame?), along with the possessions he had selected as important enough to fit in the one suitcase she allowed him, so he could run off to find the house where he though his parents were still prisoners after several decades. Having found the house he had risked his life, and the lives of others, to find, the great detective then spent time examining a wounded dog rather than quickly searching the house for his parents. There certainly are such dysfunctional people in real life but there are an unbelievable number of them in this book. The warlord, Wang Po, was described as having taken Christopher's mother away "in the dead of the night." But we were previously told that she was kidnapped while Uncle Philip took him to the market during the day. How did Christopher learn about "Diana Roberts," the European woman who was being held in a missionary home for the aged in Hong Kong? Did anybody edit this book? Did anybody check it for plot continuity and agreement?
Rating: 
Summary: I love this book.
Review: I love this book. Will you? It's hard to say. If you are concerned with question of one's responsibility towards global justice, toward those who are close to us, to ourselves, and the elusiveness of it all - this book is a gentle pat on your shoulder. If you enjoy English - English, the pat is even softer.
Rating:
Summary: As Good As Remains of the Day
Review: There seems to be quite a few reviewers who prefer Remains of the Day over When We Were Orphans. I don't quite understand this preference since there are obvious parallels between the two books. For example: 1. Both books take place before, during and after WWII.
2. Both books have a main character/narrator who is English.
3. Both books have a main character/narrator who is delusional. (Remains's Stevens is delusional of his Master's (Darlington's) dealings with the Nazis. Orphans's Banks is delusional of his parents still being held captive in the same house for 30 years.)
4. Both books have a main character/narrator who is incapable of accepting love from a woman. (Remain's Stevens turns down Miss Kenton's love for him. Orphan's Banks similarly turns down Sarah's love for him. He deserts her at the gramaphone store in Shanghai, doesn't he?)
5. Both books have a supporting character who unintentionally betrays the main character's/narrator's trust. (Remain's Darlington unintentionally betrayed Stevens with his dealings with the Nazis. Orphan's Uncle Philip betrayed Banks with his dealings with the Communists.) I could go on and on with the similarities, but I'll stop here. My point for bringing all this up is if you the reader can accept the main character being delusional, unaccepting of love from a woman, etc. in one book--why do you have a problem with it in another book? One reviewer found the Banks character detestable. I would like to ask that reviewer, didn't she find the Stevens character just as detestable? Wasn't he as self-centered, heartless, and shallow as the Banks character? But then everyone is raving about Remains of the Day and finding all kinds of problems with When We Were Orphans. Now I would like to get to the climax in both books. In Remains of the Day, Stevens finally gets together with Miss Kenton after all these years only to discover that she is unwilling to move back to Darlington Hall. Essentially she rejects him. In When We Were Orphans, Banks finally gets together with his mother after all these years only to discover that she barely remembers him. Essentially she rejects him too. If you the reader had a problem with the climax in Orphans, why didn't you have a problem with the climax in Remains? Aren't they essentially the same? As you can see from my review, I liked Orphans and Remains equally. Both were well written with interesting characters in a good storyline. Sure there were some things that bothered me about Banks just as there were some things that bothered me about Stevens--but why do we as readers have to like every character that we read? Life is interesting when there are different types of people. Likewise fiction is interesting when there are different types of people--likeable and unlikeable. I can read off a bunch of characters who I have found unlikeable. Read just about any Dostoyevski novel--with the exception of The Idiot--and you will find a main character who is in one way or another detestable. Raskonikov of Crime and Punishment comes to mind. For those of you who have not read When We Were Orphans, read it with an open mind and you may be surprised to find that you like it. Ishiguro DOES NOT write like your typical bestselling novelist--he is in a league of his own. He challenges your ability and imagination as a reader. One last note--when Banks came across Akira as a soldier...was that really Akira? You are being challenged.
Rating:
Summary: quite Boring
Review: I had to plow through this book, which made no real sense after a while. It was soo boring. Full of nonsence information. I always felt that a book that was short listed for the Booker prize could be something more... well ... exciting. It was just boring and it had no real point to the whole story.
Rating:
Summary: yuck. famous author writes like a high schooler
Review: Oh how I hated this book. Sometimes I give up on a book when it is written poorly or with poor story craftsmanship. But in the case of When We Were Orphans, I was so disgusted with the poor quality of the story itself that I willed my self to finish it just so I could come home one day and write a review for Amazon. ... Ishiguro has written like a high schooler who has good technical ability but is not mature enough to actually think his story through. I kept finding myself chuckling at the absurdity of still thinking one's parents were alive and in the same darn house after having been kidnapped 30 years earlier. Huh?? I was also constantly reminded of the Belgian comic hero TinTin and his two-dimensional journies around the exotic regions of the globe....all 11 year old adolescent fantasy and thinness. Maybe the meditations on a child's memories make this the actual point?? A highly respected journalist friend of mine has one primary test for the quality of a story: do all the dots get connected in the end? And in the case of When We Were Orphans, the dots are not only disconnected - they keep disappearing as the story unfolds. Weak characters, simplistic plot devices, lazy story construction, offensive simplicity, etc. etc. I admit my vitriol is in large part motivated by a sense of disappointment after the oft praised Remains of the Day and even An Artist of the Floating World. Sorry Ishiguro....this is terribly weak and I suspect you know it. I'll give you another chance on your next novel though.
Rating:
Summary: Absurd...
Review: It left me annoyed with so many unanswered questions: Why would any sane person think for a minute his parents were still alive, after having disappeared over 30 years earlier? Even to the point that they were planning a reception when his parents were freed? And why would they think it even remotely possible that they were still being held captive in the SAME house all these years? Why would he suddenly and totally out of character decide to run off with Sarah? and then not do it? Why did everyone in London seem to think he (a detective) was capable of solving the sino/japaneese crises, to the point that they laid some sort of guilt complex on him for not doing anything? How could he possibly be so intent on getting to this house in the middle of a war, literally on the front, and insult the chinese for NOT jumping to his aid? and why was everyone so aware and interested in his quest, to the point that they were willing to walk through the war torn warren to help him find the house, that his parents were supposedly STILL being held captive in.. oh did I mention 30 YEARS LATER??? Like this is normal everyday behaviour. Like a previous reviewer, I had just seen "it's a beautiful mind" and my only explanation as I went along was that he was completely delusional, and that what we were seeing was NOT reality, but such was not the case. I could go on and on... And the ending had nothing to do with any of the above questions. None of the above was in any way explained. This book made little sense to me, but I read it to the end hoping somehow it would all fall into place, but it never did. I wish I had read all these reviewS before I spent good money on the book.
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't live up to the hype
Review: I just finished reading "When We Were Orphans", and I was very disappointed. I found the storyline to be silly and unbelievable. What a letdown this was.
Rating:
Summary: Memoirs of a self-absorbed conceited man
Review: The only reason I kept reading this book was to try to fight insomnia. As Christopher Banks' character developed, I grew to dislike him so much that I wanted to see if he'd finally be put in his place. What a pompous @ss. Great demonstration of the naivety (sp?) of the Western world to anything foreign.
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