The Unconsoled (Review)

Title: "The Unconsoled"
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Language: English
Genre(s): Novel
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Released: 1995
Pages: 535 pp (paperback edition)
ISBN: 0-571-17718-2 (paperback edition)

Uhh..uno de los libros de Ishiguro que mas me costo leer, creo que es innecesariamente largo. De todas formas es muy divertido y uno esta constantemente tratando de entender porque Mr Ryder parece saber mas de lo que dice. El personaje principal es un pianista muy renombrado que llega a una ciudad a dar un concierto del cual ni se acuerda. Obviamente Mr Ryder tiene algunos problemas de memoria y esto complica la trama ya que no se sabe porque recuerda algunas cosas y otras no.
Comparto la opinion de otros bloggers cuando dicen que si es el primer libro de Ishiguro que leen, seguro que no les va a gustar. Me quedo, definitivamente con los anteriores aunque no deja de ser un muy buen libro. Le doy 2 estrellitas de 5 (**).

Reviews:
Jabberwock
BlackMuddyRiver
Reading Group Center

Sinopsis: "Mr Ryder, a musician acclaimed as "the world's finest living pianist...perhaps the very greatest of the century" [p. 11] has been summoned to give a performance that may be the most important of his life. But the exact nature of the impending performance eludes him, since Ryder is afflicted with large gaps of memory. He seems to have visited this place before- he soon discovers that he has a wife or mistress here and a little boy who may be his son- but he cannot remember when. He has forgotten the details of the Herculean schedule that his handlers have prepared for him. And he is repeatedly startled by figures from his English past who appear surreally in the town's winding streets, on its trams, and in the houses that Ryder visits on a geometrically increasing series of cryptic and outlandish errands.

Ryder cannot remember what he or these people are doing here, but everyone remembers him. And everyone wants something from him. In the course of the next three days, Ryder is called on to visit childhood friends, peruse albums of clippings, judge musical rehearsals, reconcile estranged families, plead the cause of a disgraced orchestra conductor, and even serve as the guest of honor at the funeral of a total stranger. Behind all these requests is the omnipresent expectation that he somehow restore the morale of a community gripped by a profound despair. It is a despair that is expressed in terms of culture, but that infects the most intimate corners of its victims' lives. For this is a town that idolizes its artists and suffers a collective breakdown when its idols fail.

It is Ryder's crippling defect of character that he can refuse none of the requests that are made of him- except, perhaps, for the ones that truly matter. Even as the pianist desperately tries to meet his "responsibilities"- and to grasp the situation that he is supposed to salvage- it becomes clear that he is both a flawed messiah and a tragically limited human being. With his exaggerated sense of public duty and his stifled, self-deluding voice, Ryder is reminiscent of another Ishiguro character, the butler Stevens who narrates The Remains of the Day. Ryder, too, is at once the beneficiary of a social order and its uncomprehending victim, a man who has sacrificed his life on the altar of a particular kind of service."