When We Were Orphans
3 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by Winterson from Peacehaven , East Sussex United Kingdom on Monday, November 17, 2003
Read, but wont re-read so am letting it go wild. Hard going, and quite traumatic, but essentially worth it.
From Amazon:
Born in early-twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age of nine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, more than twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in London society; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him fame has done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents' alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthine city of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own, painful past, only to find that war is ravaging Shanghai beyond recognition-and that his own recollections are proving as difficult to trust as the people around him.
Masterful, suspenseful and psychologically acute, When We Were Orphans offers a profound meditation on the shifting quality of memory, and the possibility of avenging one’s past.
This ray is now taking members
Members are as follows - member in bold currently has possession of the book: (If you wish to join, please PM me and I will add you!)
MEMBER / LOCATION:
coolboxuk - UK
This is how it works:
If you wish to be added to the list, please PM me with your details.
You will be sending the book to the person who appears after you in the list, so you need to PM them to get their address!
It's not a race, but please read and send the book on as speedily as you can, other people are dying to read it too.
Please journal the book once you have received it (so we all know where it currently is) and again when you have read it (so we know what you thought of it!)
If you're the last person on the list (i.e. we run out of members) the book is yours to release as you see fit...
From Amazon:
Born in early-twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age of nine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, more than twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in London society; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him fame has done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents' alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthine city of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own, painful past, only to find that war is ravaging Shanghai beyond recognition-and that his own recollections are proving as difficult to trust as the people around him.
Masterful, suspenseful and psychologically acute, When We Were Orphans offers a profound meditation on the shifting quality of memory, and the possibility of avenging one’s past.
This ray is now taking members
Members are as follows - member in bold currently has possession of the book: (If you wish to join, please PM me and I will add you!)
MEMBER / LOCATION:
coolboxuk - UK
This is how it works:
If you wish to be added to the list, please PM me with your details.
You will be sending the book to the person who appears after you in the list, so you need to PM them to get their address!
It's not a race, but please read and send the book on as speedily as you can, other people are dying to read it too.
Please journal the book once you have received it (so we all know where it currently is) and again when you have read it (so we know what you thought of it!)
If you're the last person on the list (i.e. we run out of members) the book is yours to release as you see fit...
Received today and 2nd on my reading list. Shouldn't take too long... coolboxuk
Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. The language reminded me of what I would have expected a Sherlock Holmes novel to be like (not that I've ever read one - just my imagination!): slightly old fashioned, somewhat condescending, and much attention to detail. It was, however, not the language in itself but the further portrayal of the main character that I found rather off-putting. The descriptions of the environment in England as well as Shanghai at the time are probably quite accurate but even within such a scenario I absolutely cannot imagine that anybody would have displayed such arrogance as to his purpose and the far reaching effects of that purpose as our main character here, and have gotten away with it as well. Most certainly not in the context of war and Japanese invasion in Shanghai! This goes to the point of being ridiculous, and for me has ruined the otherwise intriguing mystery story of this book. -- coolboxuk
Further to my own comments above, I've just looked up what the WWW has to say about the book and its hero, which will probably help anybody interested to make up their mind whether to give it a try or not... -- coolboxuk
Christopher Banks
Written by Kazuo Ishiguro
"After all, when we were children, when things went wrong, there wasn't much we could do to help put it right. But now we're adults, now we can...Remember, old chap, how we used to play those games? Over and over? How we used to pretend to be detectives searching for my father? Now we're grown, we can at last put things right."
CHRISTOPHER BANKS is the narrator and detective hero of this acclaimed new novel by Kazuzo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans (2000). Or is he? Christopher is nine years old when his father, a British businessman possibly inadvertently involved in trafficking opium--disappears from the family home in turn-of-the century Shanghai. But boys will be boys, and so Christopher and his best friend Akira while away the time playing detectives, dreaming of cracking impossible cases and winning fame and glory.
Until Christopher's mother, an outspoken anti-opium crusader, also disappears, also under mysterious circumstances, and he is sent to live in England in a home he has never seen, raised by an aunt he's never met. Haunted by his past, he dedicates his life to becoming a great detective, and at last he actually becomes one (or at least he claims). We're talking Sherlock Holmes here, by the way. Nothing as immediate and brutal as Sam Spade or Race Williams here, thank you. In Christopher's world, everything is quite refined, thankyouverymuch.
Finally, in 1937, he returns to Shanghai, now a world famous detective, bent on solving the great mystery of his life, and to rescue his parents, whom he believes have been held captive for twenty years. (Let's just say Chris has a few reality-perception issues to work through.)
But it's a different world from the one he left as a boy -- the world is on the brink of world war and the Japanese are invading China. And, as Christopher pursues his investigation, aided by his long-lost childhood friend, now a Japanese soldier (or is he?), it soon becomes clear that the boundaries between fact and fantasy are beginning to blur, and that Christopher may not be such a reliable narrator after all. In fact, it eventually becomes quite clear that Christopher may be downright delusional, and even a bit of an asshole.
Using the conventions of detective fiction, Ishiguro dares to call into question almost everything we think we know. In many ways, the reader himself is forced, then, to become the detective, and to seek out the truth underlying Christopher's narration. And as the reader is drawn into Christopher's world, and Shanghai itself is torn apart by warring Chinese and Japanese and the bullets buzz through the air, the very walls between reality and imagination begin to buckle and heave.
This is an emotionally wrenching, beautifully-written book, though a little on the precious and ponderous side at times, that has LITERATURE stamped all over it. It may drag occasionally, and it may even piss you off, but that's cool, because that's what great books should do: dare to ask tough and important questions of us. A little squirming isn't a bad thing. Yeah, When We Were Orphans is a mystery, but even more, it's about the whims of memory, the stories we make of our own lives and the sometimes tenuous grasp we have on our own truths. It also finds the time to shine a hard, piercing light into such areas as cultural displacement, social climbing, the drug trade, the class system, racism and childhood trauma. And yet, on its most basic level, it's also a great character-driven story. If you can stick with it, and plow through the at-times stifling formality of Christopher's world, you'll find there's a kick-ass story under there.
Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan in 1954 and emigrated to England at the age of five. He is the author of four previous novels, including The Unconsoled (1995) and the Booker Prize -winning The Remains of the Day (19890 . Ishiguro's work has been translated into twenty-eight languages. In 1995, he received an Order of the British Empire for service to literature, and in 1998 was named a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France. He lives in London with his wife and daughter.
"Perhaps there are those who who are able to go through their lives unfettered by such concerns. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it, but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm."
UNDER OATH
"(When We Were Orphans) is a compelling novel that artfully depicts certain specific political and cultural clashes as a backdrop to exploring the conflict inherent in any individual's pursuit of freedom and identity. Serious fiction readers will both enjoy and admire Ishiguro's subtle work.
(Brad Hooper, American Library Association)
.
"Good writers abound -- good novelists are very rare. Kazuo Ishiguro is that rarity."
(New York Times)
Christopher Banks
Written by Kazuo Ishiguro
"After all, when we were children, when things went wrong, there wasn't much we could do to help put it right. But now we're adults, now we can...Remember, old chap, how we used to play those games? Over and over? How we used to pretend to be detectives searching for my father? Now we're grown, we can at last put things right."
CHRISTOPHER BANKS is the narrator and detective hero of this acclaimed new novel by Kazuzo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans (2000). Or is he? Christopher is nine years old when his father, a British businessman possibly inadvertently involved in trafficking opium--disappears from the family home in turn-of-the century Shanghai. But boys will be boys, and so Christopher and his best friend Akira while away the time playing detectives, dreaming of cracking impossible cases and winning fame and glory.
Until Christopher's mother, an outspoken anti-opium crusader, also disappears, also under mysterious circumstances, and he is sent to live in England in a home he has never seen, raised by an aunt he's never met. Haunted by his past, he dedicates his life to becoming a great detective, and at last he actually becomes one (or at least he claims). We're talking Sherlock Holmes here, by the way. Nothing as immediate and brutal as Sam Spade or Race Williams here, thank you. In Christopher's world, everything is quite refined, thankyouverymuch.
Finally, in 1937, he returns to Shanghai, now a world famous detective, bent on solving the great mystery of his life, and to rescue his parents, whom he believes have been held captive for twenty years. (Let's just say Chris has a few reality-perception issues to work through.)
But it's a different world from the one he left as a boy -- the world is on the brink of world war and the Japanese are invading China. And, as Christopher pursues his investigation, aided by his long-lost childhood friend, now a Japanese soldier (or is he?), it soon becomes clear that the boundaries between fact and fantasy are beginning to blur, and that Christopher may not be such a reliable narrator after all. In fact, it eventually becomes quite clear that Christopher may be downright delusional, and even a bit of an asshole.
Using the conventions of detective fiction, Ishiguro dares to call into question almost everything we think we know. In many ways, the reader himself is forced, then, to become the detective, and to seek out the truth underlying Christopher's narration. And as the reader is drawn into Christopher's world, and Shanghai itself is torn apart by warring Chinese and Japanese and the bullets buzz through the air, the very walls between reality and imagination begin to buckle and heave.
This is an emotionally wrenching, beautifully-written book, though a little on the precious and ponderous side at times, that has LITERATURE stamped all over it. It may drag occasionally, and it may even piss you off, but that's cool, because that's what great books should do: dare to ask tough and important questions of us. A little squirming isn't a bad thing. Yeah, When We Were Orphans is a mystery, but even more, it's about the whims of memory, the stories we make of our own lives and the sometimes tenuous grasp we have on our own truths. It also finds the time to shine a hard, piercing light into such areas as cultural displacement, social climbing, the drug trade, the class system, racism and childhood trauma. And yet, on its most basic level, it's also a great character-driven story. If you can stick with it, and plow through the at-times stifling formality of Christopher's world, you'll find there's a kick-ass story under there.
Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan in 1954 and emigrated to England at the age of five. He is the author of four previous novels, including The Unconsoled (1995) and the Booker Prize -winning The Remains of the Day (19890 . Ishiguro's work has been translated into twenty-eight languages. In 1995, he received an Order of the British Empire for service to literature, and in 1998 was named a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France. He lives in London with his wife and daughter.
"Perhaps there are those who who are able to go through their lives unfettered by such concerns. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it, but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm."
UNDER OATH
"(When We Were Orphans) is a compelling novel that artfully depicts certain specific political and cultural clashes as a backdrop to exploring the conflict inherent in any individual's pursuit of freedom and identity. Serious fiction readers will both enjoy and admire Ishiguro's subtle work.
(Brad Hooper, American Library Association)
.
"Good writers abound -- good novelists are very rare. Kazuo Ishiguro is that rarity."
(New York Times)
This looks interesting, one more book to add to my collection, i'll read them all in the end. :)
