Kazuo Ishiguro – Nocturnes – Review

 

Nocturnes is a collection of five stories that takes the reader into the lives of musicians both professional and otherwise, who are at a certain point in their careers and relationships. Although subtle in their telling and mundane on the surface, one comes away with many emotions, including sadness, heartbreak, out-loud laughter, and a greater understanding of how we, as mere human beings, experience love and deal with love lost.

Ishiguro is a master of the understated. One can read through these stories and take little from them. However, this author requires the reader to pay attention to the character's nuances and look below the surface of outward emotions and sometimes absurd actions to discover many things, at times profound and universal for many.

The more emotional of these tales I found to be Cellists. The teller of the story is a sax player working with a band in the terraces and cafes of Venice. He tells of a young man from Hungry who spends his time listening and enjoying the many orchestras and bands spread across the piazza. We come to learn he is a well-trained cellist, who meets an American woman on holiday and changes the boy as a musician and a human being. We can only really guess at these profound changes, but one leans towards the negative...

It has been a while where I have actually laughed out loud while reading a story. In the story Nocturnes I giggled like a schoolboy at the antics of the two main characters. Our narrator is an all-around saxophonist, hitting middle age and living in Southern California. He considers himself to be a “serious musician" who simply hasn't had the breaks to launch him into real success. He lives in a small apartment with his wife and has turned a closet into a practice room, soundproofed with egg cartons and rubber, which he calls the cubicle. He is not an ugly guy; however, he is not a George Clooney. The wife is leaving him for a rich, old flame, who feels bad about him, and offers to pay for plastic surgery to enhance his flat-line career. He hesitantly goes along, and what follows highlights that in LA LA land, one's looks will trump one's talent every time.

Coming away from this collection, I realized how music can play such a major role in our lives. In the story Malvern Hills, though, we see the trials of a young, struggling guitarist who meets an older couple who have devoted their lives to music, only to come to the end of life questioning their choices and perhaps the fragility of their marriage. By putting music above everything else, in the end, was it worth the sacrifices?

Again, reading Ishiguro, the stories, characters, and themes linger for many days. These five tales of love, love-lost, music, and the vagaries of the human heart are no different. 

A extraordinary read.