The Buried Giant

What follows here is a blogpost I wrote but never finished and so never published. It's a pity because I'm interested to see where I was going with this, especially since I recently re-read Never Let Me Go and I have thoughts.

Kazuo Ishiguro is a one-trick pony. The trick happens to be the equivalent of a naturally born unicorn-pegasus hybrid (apparently known as an alicorn (or even hornipeg, thank you Wikipedia but that cannot possibly be correct, can it?) but which I will call a princess twilight sparkle and await a copyright infringement suit from Hasbro). Now that I have set the tone of my return to the blogosphere, I ask you: Who doesn’t like ponies?

A little while ago, I read an article about intelligent animals that appear to count or answer questions, but are really responding to subtle cues in the examiner's behaviour. Like Clever Hans, a pony that could do simple addition with single-digit numbers, but was really responding to an unconscious tic his owner tacked when stating the correct answer.

Clever Hans and his owner

This article reminded me of the week that I briefly, but with the best of intentions, adopted two puppies. My flatmate’s girlfriend had found a litter of strays playing in the street, but could only catch two of them. Since it was December, and my flatmate and co were visiting family for two weeks, the pups were mine to house-train. So, a few times a day, the pups and I would walk outside and I would pretend not to watch them do their business, but because I was watching them, once they had done their business, I would praise them to make sure it stuck that peeing outside was almost as good as being a princess twilight sparkle.

But then, once inside again, the female would immediately pee on the carpet. E-v-e-r-y t-i-m-e. I started to suspect she was messing with me. I watched her like a hawk to see whether I could find some clue in her behaviour as to her behaviour. Each time she peed inside I would discipline her by lowering my voice and repeating her name, and each time she peed outside I would praise her by raising my voice and repeating her name. But, still, she peed inside. E-v-e-r-y t-i-m-e.

Then I realised that she was just squatting outside and not actually doing her business, but because I was praising her thinking she was doing her business, she thought she was supposed to just squat outside and, since she still needed to pee, would do her business inside even though it led to her being called by name in an ominous tone of voice. She also hollowed out the couch from underneath, so that she could nap inside the couch, and hid the stuffing.

Ishiguro's novel The Buried Giant is about an elderly couple named Axl and Beatrice who are on a journey to visit their son. Their journey takes place in sixth-century Britain, a period I confess I know very little about. The highlights according to Wikipedia are: plague, famine and drought.  The highlights according to the novel are that the Romans are gone, and the Saxons and Britons have been at war, but the Saxons have won, and there is a kind of tense truce between them. Ogres are real, but not a problem "provided one did not provoke them". After all "in those days there was so much else to worry about. How to get food out of the hard ground; how not to run out of firewood..."

The one-trick pony that is Ishiguro's writing style physically takes form in the novel as a "mist" that is erasing the corners of people's memories and a dragon named Querig (which is dragon for princess twilight sparkle thank you very much). The main characters share a Alzheimer's-like amnesia of their own lives that affects even their memories of their son and where he lives, so that their entire journey is tinged with anxiety. Along their tense journey, the elderly couple meet villagers, children, soldiers and miscellaneous ferrymen, all affected by the mist.

This pony has been called many names by many readers, including "level banality" and "rhetoric in search of a form", an insult so snide it hisses. But let's call it Clever Hans princess twilight sparkle here. All of Ishiguro's stories slowly, so slowly that it's almost painful, unveil their secrets in layers as they speak, as they act, as they reason, as they dream. In Ishiguro's other novels, this amnesia that slowly builds a model of itself protects and hides secrets, both historical and intimate. In Never Let Me Go, the dilemma is the ethics of cloning. In Artist of a Floating World, it is Japanese actions during World War II. (I am not even going to pretend I understood The Unconsoled, however,)

On another level, the novel is a good analogy for its author’s style - here the metaphor becomes a bit strained...

And? And ...? I guess I'll never know now. To avoid cross-contamination, I'll blog my thoughts about Never Let Me Go in a different post.  

The City We Became

Some cities are just more real than others. That's the premise of The City We Became, where some cities are born and become sentient, represented by chosen citizens known as 'avatars'; they include Hong Kong and Sao Paulo -- and now New York. I haven't been 'home' in 15 years, but Jo'burg could be one of those cities. As I read, I couldn't help but wonder what the avatar of Jo'burg be like. He (why a 'he'?) would be a hustler, a survivor; he wouldn't be from there but he'd be of there; he'd place value in watches, cars, houses but also in fortitude, in smiling through the pain, in never saying never.

In The City We Became, the neonatal New York and its six avatars (five boroughs plus one to rule them all) have to fight for survival against an ancient enemy known as the Woman in White (snappy name). To do this, they have to find each other and fight as one. The premise is original, but the plot is well-worn -- for a reason: it makes for great storytelling. And the author, NK Jemisin, tells a great story. There's just one catch.

I have a theory -- let's call it my 'He was in the vicinity' theory. Authors and writers create bad guys (and sometimes good guys) who are larger than life and apparently impossible to defeat -- until ... until some flaw or accident or characteristic unique to the hero (that the hero usually doesn't know how to exert or control) cuts them down. But the flaw or accident or characteristic is just so insignificant next the legend of the bad guy that the author has created. The defeat is tainted because the victory seems coincidental, rather than earned, but we give it to the hero because, well, he was in the vicinity.

The City We Became suffers from Vicinity syndrome. The Woman in White is not only ancient, she's angry (as it turns out, not unjustifiably so) and she's everywhere. The author describes in excruciating detail the feathery white tendrils that adorn buildings, roads and even people, in some places forming portals to another dimension that are like wide cables that extend from the ground into the sky. 

By contrast, the city's avatars are newborns. Only two of them have any conscious understanding of who they are and what they can do, one more so than the other. They bounce from encounter with the Woman in White and her lackeys to encounter, surviving mostly by dumb luck and occasionally instinct. In the process, they glean some information about who or what they are, because the antagonist can't resist the opportunity to monologue.

Ultimately, they survive, because this book has sequels and why would someone read a sequel with no surviving characters? But they do it by obliterating two of the initial premises, which I call cheating. So not only do the characters win against an enemy who outranked them but they do it by changing the rules. This is a corollary to my initial theory: sometimes the only way for an author to defeat their own villain is to prove that one of their own statements about said villain or about the universe they have created is untrue. Sometimes they get away with it; sometimes it triggers my existing trust issues. In this book, it was the latter.

When I think about this book, the adjective that comes to mind is 'slick'. The author is quick to distract us from the destruction of the laws of her own universe and on to happier things. Much like she does in other sections of the book, for example, when the avatars find out the tragic truth behind how their city comes to be sentient and the reason for the Woman in White's anger. One of the avatars briefly has an existential crisis, but she gets over it remarkably quickly and doesn't mention it again.

Rarely does a review criticise a book for being well written and edited, but this book could stand to be rougher around the edges. It is too neat, distracting the reader from the shapes the plot is contorted into to convince you that good is good and coincidently it's also the side that's telling the story. I want a story where the Woman in White is not only manipulative, she's also right; she's just telling a different story. 

I also want a story that doesn't violate its own premises so that those in the vicinity can claim victory.

The Last Policeman series

I'm not generally one for detective novels or police procedurals, unless what we're hunting down is some metaphysical truth or something half in and half out of this world, because (and this shouldn't come as a shock to you, oh regular reader) I don't have much time for the real world. It's dull and disappointing and not what I was promised, but that's a whole other post.

I was going to introduce The Last Policeman series as an exception, but on (brief) reflection, it fits the mold. At the beginning of the first book, an asteroid has just been discovered heading towards Earth (it was 'hiding' behind the Sun) and humanity has 150 days to get its affairs in order before an extinction level event. North America will be spared the brunt of the impact (of course), but not the fallout.

So, now, the question is: What do you do when you have 150 days to live? The books both ask and answer that question. Most people 'go Bucket List' -- they abandon their loved ones to do the things that up to now they've only ever dreamt of doing: dangerous sports, travelling the world, taking copious amounts of drugs, having sex in public and so on. Everyone else begins hoarding resources and, as time goes on, they strip everything they can find of even middling value.

One man, however, carries on carrying on. As law and order takes on a different shape, a police detective continues taking on cases, even though they seem impossible to solve -- you know, given that everyone has scattered to the four winds and the only certainty is the end of the world in a hundred days and counting.

I read the first book a couple of years ago and I enjoyed it enough to download the other two books in the series, although I only really remember the beginning of the book and a handful of other details. (PS: I wrote a post about it where I misspelt the author's name, which doesn't bode well.) I then started the second book but only got a third of the way in before abandoning it.

But then, at the beginning of 2025, I decided that I have to read all the books I own before buying any new ones. See, I recently moved house and found I had way more stuff than I'd anticipated (I had to hire a second truck), but two thirds of that 'stuff' is books and two thirds of those books are unread... And for anyone suggesting that I *whispering* sell any of my books, you're reading the wrong blog, heathen.

So I read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro again (I never said I couldn't reread books) and then I read The City We Became by NK Jemisin and then I picked up Countdown City again. I started at the beginning ... and finished it in three days flat.

Unlike my post about the first book, the prose is clear and thin on metaphor, except when needed and even then it's bare bones. Like the main character and the genre itself, the author focuses on fact and function. When he compares one scent to another, for example, it's to tie two events together. 

The main character is more mature than in the first book (although in another sense, he's regressed to a lovestruck pre-teen). Hank Palace (yes, that is genuinely his name) is your classic detective, devoted to revealing the order inherent in the chaos, but he's no longer obsessed with the rule of law but with what is 'right' -- which at the end of days seems a bit of a moving target. For me, that made him easier to empathise with. I love nothing more than an unreliable narrator in an extreme situation whose actions you, the reader, are prepared to justify, no matter what.

And I have a feeling that statement is going to be tested in the third book.

As if the world ending is not enough, the tension really picks up in the second half of the book, although it's slightly undercut when you realise the main character survives at least long enough to feature in one more instalment. That is perhaps my favourite part of the book -- pages and pages of Hank surviving when survival seems pointless. And Houdini the dog, especially the scene where he stands in the doorway like a werewolf, framed by fire. 

In the end the mystery felt a bit constructed, but -- and this should be obvious -- I'm not here for the plot (a bit like in life).

Unfortunately, a rogue blogger already spoilt part of the plot of the third book for me, which I am peeved about, because this one's a doozy. But I'll keep it to myself, at least for now.