No small consolation

Surprise, surprise: my latest read is prompting an existential crisis as vast as the Grand Canyon to open up below my feet. Good thing I can fly... well, glide.

I'm reading The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, after Remains of the Day completely charmed me with its subtlety a few months ago. The blurb said that it was a novel about a pianist who finds himself in a city "he cannot identify for a concert he cannot remember agreeing to give."

The alarm bells began to ding, but more like a doorbell than anything else.

The cover is inviting. It features a romantic, Old-World city street in blue tones, set on what looks like faded brown wrapping paper because you can see the faint lines weave down the page. So I opened it up.

The first paragraph of a book is always my favourite. It tells you what to expect; it is the story at its best. Maybe I should stick to reading first paragraphs?

In this first paragraph, a taxi-driver is looking for the hotel clerk, who seems to be missing. He looks (inanely) behind potplants and chairs before leaving the traveller alone with his bags.

The alarm bells began to ring like the doorbell to the portal of hell.

I should have just put the book down. If only I had listened! 'Put that book down!' they had all said. But no, I was going to defy the world.

I'm about halfway now. The rest of the paragraphs have been much of the same. Bizarre characters, bizarre events, one man's subconscious traversing the city and interrogating him. Everything takes on a Freudian meaning and the main character is trapped in a whirlpool of it.

Perhaps this should encourage me, that I had the same idea as someone as brilliant as Ishiguro. But no, not really. All it does is throw my weaknesses in my face. My characters are too abstract, my plot too arbitrary. I focus too much on details that do not propel my plot forward.

Do I really have the writerly strength to improve on these faults? Do I have the strength to make my city convincing in all its details? I'm not even sure I have the strength to finish reading this novel...