For one thing, there’s the puzzling collapse of marriage negotiations for his younger daughter, Noriko, with whispers that the father might be to blame. Yet it would be wrong to say that events from before and during the war have been forgotten, and we soon realise that there’s a shadow hanging over the ageing artist.
Most of the damage to his house and garden has been repaired, and while his wife tragically died towards the end of the war, he has his grandson Ichiro to distract him from dwelling on the past too much.
The Second World War has been over for three years, and life is beginning to settle down. It’s well worth the wait, too – a clever book with an intriguing narrator looking back at an uncertain past.Īn Artist of the Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro’s second novel, is narrated by Masuji Ono, an artist who has stepped back from public life and is now enjoying a peaceful retirement in his large house on the outskirts of the city. Alas, I had no time to rectify that at the time, but it’s been at the back of my mind (and highlighted on my Excel reading list) ever since, and today’s the day that this oversight gets corrected. While I was busy reviewing International Booker longlisters earlier this year, I selected a book from my shelves for a quick reread of something I’d already reviewed – only to discover half-way through that although I had read it since starting my site, it had been during one of my rare injury-induced blogging slumps, and I hadn’t actually written the post.
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