When We Were Orphans

When We Were Orphans is a character study and exploration of childhood trauma. This book made me cry. Absolutely in my top ten favorites of all time.

Kazuo Ishiguro's book's never leave you with an upbeat feeling, do they? Of course I certainly won't ever forget about any of them either.

Reading this was similar to reading Never Let Me Go—I couldn't put it down because I was dying to discover what was really going on. Patience is required since Ishiguro's books are mostly focused on the internal experiences of those characters, not the plot.

When We Were Orphans is set up as a thriller or detective novel. Charles Banks, the narrator and protagonist of the story, has chosen detective as his profession. This is an interesting contradiction since his blind spot is the traumatic incident around the disappearance of his parents when he was a child in the British colony in Shanghai.

Banks went back to England, an orphan for all purposes, finished school and quietly decided detective was the future for him. He lived most of his life in a childlike haze or delusion, a lot of it admittedly created by trusted adults who lied and kept things from him as a child. He met another orphaned adult named Sarah, with whom he had in common a need to be part of some great work, to help out the world in some significant way but found out how difficult it was to overcome their own needs.

You would think that as a detective he would have prioritized going back to Shanghai to find his parents. Instead he spent time building a name for himself in London. Once he finally decided to go to Shanghai, he doesn't see things realistically, trusts the wrong people and misidentifies a random Japanese soldier as his childhood friend. In other words, he didn't act as the clever and objective detective he's supposed to be. In the climactic scene, he rushed through the streets of Shanghai in the middle of fighting between the Japanese and Chinese, but he never let go of his personal goal of finding the house he believed his parents were held in, ignoring the chaos and violence all around him.

Like many, Banks' life of relative comfort came at the cost of others who suffered, but he wasn't aware until it was spelled out. The background of Banks' story includes the history of China/British relations and Imperialism leading up to WWII. I appreciate that Ishiguro doesn't take a one-sided approach to these larger issues.

This is my fourth Ishiguro novel, and I've come to the conclusion that all are unique and well written but all leave me with the same empty feeling that comes from identifying with a character's missed opportunities and misunderstandings that get resolved too late to change anything.

“Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won't be because of great statesmen or churches or organizations like this one. It'll be because people have changed.”

Short thoughts: trying to decide if I care enough about this book to write a longer review. It too me forever to get through this. I almost gave up a number of time, but I kept slogging through and I probably should have given up. I really liked Remains of the Day. Maybe it is because I knew the rough story from the movie before I read the book. But in that case the untrustworthy narrator made sense because he truly believed his bad perspective. Here he also believes his distorted perspective, but that distortion make him someone I just didn't want to be around. The story from about 50% to the end of the major event was mostly ridiculous.

The reveal at the end did not make me like the book any more.

So of the three Ishiguro books I have tried. I loved one. I did not particularly like this one. And I gave up on the Buried Giant. So I doubt I am going to try another.

The writing was superb, but the story got a little too crazy for me towards the end. A pleasure to read.

Like many folks, I discovered Ishiguro because of Never Let Me Go (rather than Remains of the Day!), and found myself not enjoying WWWO as much–but it's still a really good read. I only recently became cognizant of the whole “unreliable narrator” concept, and it's definitely interesting territory to explore. By the end of the book, it's become clear that one is journeying along with the protagonist from sentimental nostalgia toward reality (and then slightly back again), but it's not clear from the start, so this was a difficult one for me to get into.

Glad I read it, won't likely read it again, unlike Never Let Me Go.