The Unconsoled : Book Review

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Well, I was looking to read something different and someone suggested me to read “The Unconsoled” by Kazuo Ishiguro. By all definition, this was different from most of what I have read till date beside Kafka. The storyline is simple. A pianist comes to a small town for a performance and to help the resident to regain its past cultural glory. He encountered different people of the town trapped in their own problem looking up to him as savior and in the process, he also realizes his own relationship with the town. In the end, he realizes that the town is as good as it can be and perhaps left town without any performance or contribution.

He keeps drifting between reality and imagination. The beauty of Mr. Kauzo Ishiguro writing is that you will not realize that you have read 50 pages and the main character is still in the lift of hotel and conversing with the porter. The transformation of the well-mannered hotel manager working tirelessly for the good of town to a selfish lowly man working for his some vanity is so smooth and flawless that you will end up marveling at the mastery of author over words. Like a skillful painter, author painted the canvas beautifully with words with different shades of emotions in the background.

Mr. Kauzo Ishiguro doesn’t need any event or twist in the story to change the mood from happy to sad. His story will gently nudge you from one emotion to other. All you need to do is to flow with the stream. You might find it absurd that our hero is simply drifting from one place to another and often losing the track of time. You might resist that why the hero of the story is started for something and end up doing something else. You might wonder if it is real or just imagination.

The authors take to a journey where you cannot anticipate what will happen. You will read 100 pages without realizing in the story timeline its just five minutes. After finishing the novel I was pleasantly surprised that I read that much.

At last, My suggestion is if you want to read something different and allow yourself to drift lazily with the flow then this is the good book to read.

Happy reading.




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