A Pale View of Hills: Kazuo Ishiguro

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Never before have I read a work of literary fiction more carefully than I would read an Agatha Christie novel. My feelings about The Remains of the Day are mixed up with my feelings about the film, which I saw before I read the book and have seen a couple of times since I read the book, making my memory of the novel unreliable! Earlier in the story Etsuko snaps at Niki, resenting her need to reassure her mother about the decisions she made back in Japan.

Ghosts have a habit of coming back to haunt you, and both Etsuko and Sachiko have left a lot of people behind. Even if I have all the author's works in my bookshelves, I still always pick first his most famous work.Here, Etsuko acknowledges that her narrative may not be reliable, as well as admits that she did feel an “eerie” connection with Sachiko.

I am an alevel student who is currently studying this book for my coursework and I was wondering if I may have your name so I can reference your work and views which you have stated here in my essay – I feel that you have expressed these ideas in such an eloquent way and I wish to touch on what you have discussed here but I cannot do so without crediting you. Sachiko, imaginary or not, has little to look forward to at the time of her last appearance in the novel, and Ogata-San is another whose lookings forward have almost run out. than An Artist of the Floating World, especially in the middle, and perhaps expected too much regarding the 'twist. For example, Etsuko treats a piece of rope as an ordinary object being accidentally entangled with her foot, but it is still there.It nicely describes the two countries, how people act and react, and what life has been like for this character throughout her time in both places. The focus here is on Sachiko, and her determination to get out of Japan despite knowing her American partner isn’t to be trusted. In England, Etsuko lives in a rural village that Niki insists is not the real countryside but that Etsuko loves for the calm and quietness found in its lanes.

We learn that Ogata-san took Etsuko in after the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and was like a father to her.

Some major clue is left behind at the end of the novel, but it is not nearly enough or too late to interest and intrigue. Hi there, I think this is a really insightful take on this work of Ishiguro, and I find myself agreeing with the sentiment that much of this book is based around the concept of memory and how it’s unreliability interacts with our daily lives. At times, it passes by smoothly and calmly, but sooner or later, there’s always a cloud on the horizon. This short novel is an easy and, at times, intriguing read, with Ishiguro sometimes making insightful points about Japanese culture and the effect of the passage of time on his characters.