The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro - Book Discussion
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- Опубликовано: 30 июл 2021
- Hello friends, welcome to my summary and discussion of The Buried Giant, Ishiguro's post-Arthurian fantasy novel. Let me know what you thought of it in the comments below - also let me know what author you would like me to cover next.
Articles Referenced:
Charlwood, Catherine. "National Identities, Personal Crises: Amnesia in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant."
Falcus, Sarah, and Maricel Oró-Piqueras. "Ageing without remembering: Fantasy, memory and loss in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant."
Michael, Rose. "Here Be Dragons: The Buried Giant in the Hierarchy of Genres."
Stacy, Ivan. "Looking out into the fog: narrative, historical responsibility, and the problem of freedom in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant."
Vernon, Matthew, and Margaret A. Miller. "Navigating Wonder: The Medieval Geographies of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant."
Ursula K Le Guin on The Buried Giant: bookviewcafe.com/blog/2015/03...
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shoutout ishiguro's wife for always keeping it real
The beginning of the novel had me hooked, then my interest faltered as Beatrice and Axl made their way out of the Saxon village. But about the time that all the main characters started to close in on Querig I was hooked and found myself asking the questions about the right balance between remembering and forgetting as a way to make progress toward something better. I nearly stopped reading the book about halfway in but I returned to it and am glad I did because it made a powerful impression as Icame to finish it. And you're right about it not being important whether or not Beatrice and Axl ended up together on the island or not but I did wonder whether she had a change of heart remembering the truth of his "betrayal" of her, not letting her go to her son's grave, and if he accepted that he could not in fact walk with her through eternity because if her change of heart so he waded away. Ouch, painful indeed.
I liked your synopsis and analysis of the book. Nice video.
One thing: the boatman is the conduit through which a person makes it to the island. Once on the island they stay there. The boatman claims reunion is slim for loved ones… but based off of what? Maybe he’s wrong. He doesn’t even get to rest on that side. He rests on the side of the living. He even said his vacation moments are taken in the dilapidated house. Where he likes to recall his childhood. Sure he can’t bring a living person there (Axl or the old woman we met earlier)… but he can bring the dying. He only lets them off on that island. He doesn’t venture around himself and ‘see the sights’. Maybe he’s simply wrong about what awaits loved ones vis-a-vis reunion in eternity. But of course the living loved one will never know for certain the answer to that question: at least… not while they are alive. Even the strongest love, once split by death, will suffer profound doubts (CS Lewis ‘A Grief Observed’).
I found this book completely at random; I was in a café in my university looking for something to read and there it was. I had NO IDEA who Ishiguro was, never heard of the guy, never read one of its book. I feel in love with his writing and by the time of the encounter with the monks I was hooked. The second half was a bit hard to get through, I got kinda boring at parts and it took me some time to finish it but in the end it was incredible; I've never felt that a novel could have such a perfect title. I would really like to have some suggestions on what to read next of the same author. If this is his weakest book I would really like to see his best
I'm glad you enjoyed it, and what a great way to discover Ishiguro's work for the first time! In terms of his best work, generally people say that The Remains of the Day is up there. It's quite different to The Buried Giant in that it follows an English butler in the 1930s but covers similar themes in terms of memory/national identity. If you want to lean fully in to the more surreal elements of the book, The Unconsoled is the place to go. Never Let Me Go is one of my personal faves but not that similar to Buried Giant I would say.
I've just finished reading it. I must say, it took me long to get through the first half of the book, but then I got really hooked. What I love about this novel is the question it poses: what's more precious, a peace build upon a forgotten past (the buried giant) or knowing the truth about one's own history.
At first I thought it's a theoretical question, as we do not possess means to make entire generations and societies forget the past. But then - don't we really? In my country it's quite obvious people can forget worst atrocities if these are not being spoken of for a couple of decades. And many communist regimes saw to it, so that the borders of newly formed countries in Soviet block or post war order could be maintained. Uncovering the truth after time comes at a price: the facts are not here anymore; we are left with speculations. And speculations tend to encourage extreme attitudes: some will say all Polish people saved Jews heroically; some will see Poles as fierce antisemites. Unearthing the giant stirs great emotions, because we can only imagine what happened in the past, and imagination is strictly connected to emotions.
I don't get Le Guin's criticism, perhaps she's taking herself and her beloved genre too seriously. Who cares if it's a fantasy book. This is what we love our writers for: they take whatever they want and make something unexpected out of it. I enjoyed the setting of the story.
But I'm afraid I don't get the ending really. A little rope here?
Eddie, thanks for your videos and your thoughts, I love what you do. I preferred the old background. :D It was more like: "No bullshit or fancy stuff, we're talking raw books here, never mind what's behind me". ;-) I'm moving now to a next novel by Ishiguro. Keep up your good work 💪
Thank you for watching Maciek, and thank you also for your in-depth thoughts.
I tend to agree with you when it comes to Le Guin's criticism (though I have a lot of love for her and her writing), but I guess I can see where she's coming from if she felt she found herself being placed into genre conventions for her whole career, only to find 'mainstream' authors getting credit for borrowing basic genre elements.
Hahaha apologies for the background change, I'll see if I can't make it a bit messier in future :)
The ending, I assume you mean with Axl leaving. That is the fallout out of another buried giant. The whole story plays with the line between Love and Hate. Forgetting the past allowed war to turn to peace and while unearthing it means the war will come back. Forgetting their past allowed Axl and Beatrice to fall back in love. This is mirrored by Beatrice’s worries about the mist. She wanted so bad to remember her past because she wanted to remember why she loved Axl. This way she could prove that their relationship was strong enough to be carried together by the boatman. But it was actually because of that blissful ignorance that the couple was able to be happy with one another. Once the memory returned to Axl, the love is challenged. He realizes that they aren’t as close of a couple as they believed and he knows they aren’t close enough to cross together. Forgetting isn’t forgiveness and Axl knows he’s done things he can’t hope to atone for. I believe that Axl was driven by shame and guilt and this is why at the end he doesn’t address the boatman. Regardless of the love he knew, the memories demand much of him and he’s scared to be told what he already knows; he won’t be crossing after Beatrice.
@@CodyWhitlock I've read the ending once again and it's much clearer now. Oh man, that's heartbreaking. But thanks anyway :-)
Reviewer it's specifically says in the book that the boatman will take both together which is something both you and I forgot but axl didn't
Thank you so much for this breakdown.
I read The Buried Giant while still in high school, it was also the first book by Ishiguro I'd ever read (I had no idea who he was at the time). It immediately became one of my favourite books. It instantly stole my heart, it just spoke to me on a deep level. Hearing about the scathing criticism saddened me, but I loved your analysis. I think this book has a whole lot to say. I adore the style it's written in, the setting and atmosphere, the characterization... Man I can't wait to re-read it. I wonder if my interpretations and my overall view of the book has changed over the years...
I'm glad you enjoyed the video and thanks for your comment! It's always nice to hear from someone who has a true passion for a book like this. I definitely would recommend re-reading, I think The Buried Giant in particular really did benefit from a re-read for me, and I think you will absolutely get something further out of it this time.
@@eddiecational Oh I absolutely think so! Like I said, I read it in high school. Now, I'm about to sit for my BA exams in English lit (just on Monday, actually), so I have definitely come a long way when it comes to critical reading and appreciating and interpreting literature, haha. So we'll see what I think when I read it again, hopefully it holds up for me... :)
As I finished reading it, the most poingnant question, at least to me, was 'what is the nature of Beatrice's actions in the last part of the book?' regarding the painful ending. Was her memory alredy restored by the time she was on the boat? Was her memory a part of the incoming fast revenge that Wistan quoted after he killed Querig? Because, honestly, the way Axl called her a princess all the time seemed a bit forced in the beggining, and it still was til the book's ending, the difference was that we were used to read it. Maybe he was trying to force something indeed, an apology of some sort. That time when Axl and Beatrice were resting below the rocks and she remembered something that switched her mood, even though she couldn't remember EXACtly what caused it, got me thinking: when the conductor brought her, calmly, to the boat SHE'D ALREDY KNOWN the cause of her sadness, her inexistent grief. The gap between the two manifestations of anger got me thinking that she knew they weren't going to be together at the island, and she was just playing her part as someone who got their memories back. Resentful. Wanting to be with her son so badly that even the distance, what she feared the most, from Axl had not became a problem.
Just reread it for the first time since it came out. I liked it when I first read it, but did the audiobook this time and absolutely loved it. Literary fantasy is a perfect description, even an Odyssey maybe.
So… does Axl meet Beatrice on the island? I’m, sadly, guessing ‘no’. For one, the realization that her son is dead (and the circumstances of it) lead to her death.
I thought of the novel as a possible dance by Pina Bausch choreographed and filmed by Wim Wenders. The possibility of motion and amnesia could be genius!
Excellent synopsis! Thanks! Cf Orfeo myth!
I wouldn't call this a fantasy novel. There's not much of a magical system, and any sense of excitement felt very restrained. I liked how the prose style conveyed the sense of everything happening within a fog of uncertainty, but then once the dragon is slain, shouldn't that uncertainty go away? Instead we get this boat crossing chapter that's just as ambiguous as anything that came before it. If this boat symbolizes the crossing to the afterlife, that means there is no boundary in this book between reality and symbolism, since we never saw Beatrice and Axl die. Kind of underwhelming from a fantasy standpoint.
A soft magical system (when there arent rules per se) is still a magical system.
Not a good review because
one you forgot to give a spoiler warning
two no accurate analysis of the final important scene which is exactly why I was watching
three you get the story of ishiguro's wife wrong