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Dec 17, 2009

Bec rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

1 comment like (12 people liked it)

Jul 14, 2008

Seth rated it:

When We Were Orphans was, for me, a pretty fascinating exploration of the difficulties typical to the lens of overgrown sentimentailty through which one approaches the vaguely remembered past. As the narration continues, one wonders just how ephemerally Christopher Banks, the narrator, holds his grasp on reality. Quite clearly his recollections of the distant past are modified to fit his circumstances and the man he's become—and paradoxically, the man he's become is a debt owed to these remember More...

0 comments like (12 people liked it)

Feb 04, 2012

Blair rated it:

The first thing I noticed about this book was that the narrative voice - belonging to Christopher Banks, a successful detective in 1930s England - is remarkably similar to that of Stevens, the protagonist of Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. While at first this drew me in (I loved The Remains of the Day), I soon began to find it offputting. I had assumed Stevens' voice was unique, so it was a bit of a disappointment to find that what I assumed were facets of that character are actually features More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Oct 14, 2007

Kay rated it:

I've been putting off this review for a few weeks, hoping that something inchoate in me would gell, which would make me happier than it being something incoherent in Ishiguro's writing that didn't gell.

Nothing gelled.

I'll try not to write spoilers, although as I have no idea what the denouement of this book is (let alone what it might 'mean') it would be hard difficult for me to know if I did - however, the strands of the story are:

- that the narrator is an More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Feb 03, 2009

Libby rated it:

Many reviews here have commented on Ishiguro's unreliable narrators (let's let that classification stand, whether or not it is entirely valid or really applies to all of his work), as if this aspect of his fiction is so obvious, or that it has been so exhaustively mined, that there is little to nothing left to say about such a narrative strategy.

Christopher Banks, When We Were Orphans' narrator, is certainly unreliable, yes. But our relationship to him as an unreliable narrator is a More...

5 comments like (23 people liked it)

Sep 30, 2007

Dave rated it:

I'm happy to say that I've only been disappointed once by a Kazuo Ishiguro book. "Never Let Me Go" is one of the best things I've ever read, and "When We Were Orphans" isn't far behind.

Christopher Banks overcomes a tragic childhood, it seems, to become the preeiminent detective in Great Britain. This allows him access to the country's elite social circles, but it's clear there are precious few people around whom Christopher is really comfortable. As a child, thes More...

2 comments like (8 people liked it)

Sep 10, 2011

Yulia rated it:

I feel very conflicted about this novel. I was completely absorbed while reading it, though annoyed by an overly dramatic section 4/5th through and unsettled by the ending, but I think it may be a book I'll grow to be fonder of, once my uneasiness wears off. It certainly makes me wish to try another work of his. I suppose it succeeded in that regard. Bravo? I don't think I was as disappointed with it as I felt last night, certainly. 3.5 stars it is. . . Wait,no, it's gone up to five stars More...

3 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 10, 2011

Megan rated it:

This is my second book by Kazuo Ishiguro (The first being Never Let Me Go) Once again, I love his writing style and his incredibly complex and flawed characters. In When We Were Orphans, Ishiguro presented a narrator who while reliable, apparently views events and situations (especially those close to him) quite differently than others. The writing and character development are undoubtedly Ishiguro’s strengths in this novel.

Protagonist Christopher Banks is a wonderfully flawed and c More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Dec 07, 2009

Bobbi rated it:

This is the story of Christopher Banks, a "popular" British detective in the 1930's who is recalling his childhood in Shanghai, China, where his father worked for a company that was involved with the opium trade. Somehow, his parents mysteriously disappear and he is shipped off to England to live with his aunt.

During the first half of the book, Christopher is trying to piece together events in his mind from the past and during the second half, he actually goes to Shanghai t More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 07, 2008

Drick rated it:

This first person story takes place in the 1920's to 1950's. A British boy born in Shanghai moves to Englad when his parents mysteriously disappear from their home in Shanghai. He grows up to be a detective and eventually returns to Shanghai to solve the mystery of his parents' disappearance. All of this occurs with the decline of England's influence in China and WWII in the background.

One of the most striking things about the book for me was how it portrayed the colonial hubris of t More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jul 24, 2008

Tracy rated it:

Hmm...from the picture I've selected, it looks like this was made into a movie! I didn't realize that, but it would be a cool movie.

I am certain that many folks would not like this book, but I very much did. I like Ishiguro's careful style, even if it is out of the mid 20th century! It feels like E M Forster wrote a new book, the style is so careful and the content is to built up.

The story is about Christopher Banks, who was raised in China during the early part of the 20 More...

7 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 25, 2008

Nacho rated it:

Me ha resultado una lectura amena, pero no le he terminado de encontrar el punto. Me dejan frío demasiadas cosas.

El inicio esta narrado con un toque victoriano que parece estar pidiendo a gritos que James Ivory saque la chequera y lo adapte al cine. A lo largo de todo ese arranque, el protagonista se muestra pueril y me cuesta demasiado empatizar con él. También me desconcierta la aparición constante de personajes que se mofan del narrador sin que éste parezca percatarse en absolut More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 28, 2008

Kitty-Wu rated it:

Me gusta mucho como escribe Ishiguro. Quizá por sus orígenes asiáticos y su formación anglosajona, su escritura es peculiar. Me gusta porque transmite placidez, y al mismo tiempo, escribiendo sobre cosas que en un principio no me tendrían porqué interesar demasiado, me engancha totalmente. Este libro tiene partes muy buenas, y me ha gustado mucho conocer la evolución en la vida de Shangai en los años de la guerra del opio y posteriores. La vida de la alta sociedad británica no me interesa en abs More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Nov 25, 2007

Lydia rated it:

WARNING! SPOILERS
I'm not sure what to say about this book. It read like a well-written parody of a children's detective story, but, for me, ultimately failed to climb high enough above that to let me take it seriously. Since we are never sure how much we can believe our narrator, it is difficult to know how to feel. ANd we are presented with an awful lot of material that can invoke strong feeling.

The very notion that Christopher Banks is searching for his long lost parents so More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 25, 2007

minnie rated it:

I enjoyed reading this book and read it in a week.The Depiction of Shanghai in the 1930's is fascinating.The book begins with the boy Christopher Banks living in Shanghai,playing detective games with his friend Akira the japanese boy next door.Christophers mother is a campaigner against the Opium trade that his father works for.When his parents are kidnapped he is sent to England to live with an aunt,he grows up to become a celebrated detective and devotes his life to finding out what happened t More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 14, 2007

Mark rated it:

On my list of cities of the past I'd like to visit, Shanghai around 1931 would be high on the list--highly international, cosmopolitan, seedy, the air of impending doom never far away. This book starts there, and then goes back and forth to London and Shanghai in 1937 during the Japanese invasion as our narrator uses his mostly reliable memory to tell the story of how he became an orphan and his attempts to find his parents. After his parents disappeared, he is sent back to England where he be More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 01, 2011

Ian added it

Starts off well, builds up to a potentially great finish, but too much towards the end doesn't really work.

For example, although I understand the narrator is a little deluded as to the importance of his solving the case of his missing parents, either everyone else he came across was similarly deluded, or else they were all just humouring him for no obvious reason.

Bumping into his old friend Akira as he did was just daft, unless it was Ishiguro being clever and me missing something.

Additional More...

0 comments like

Mar 01, 2009

Zen rated it:

What a strange book.

At first I wasn't impressed, then I got more impressed because I figured the narrative was keeping a lot of things from us, so well done, narrative. But then the narrative didn't burst out with any stunning revelation. (I don't count what happened to his parents as a stunning revelation, because I wasn't curious enough about what happened to them, though of course it woulda pissed me off if he hadn't revealed it in the end.) I *was* curious about what was going on More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 03, 2009

Jae rated it:

This was absolutely fantastic. Ostensibly this is a detective story, one of my favorite kinds, atmospheric and lyrical in its own way, about a man searching for answers as to his parents' disappearance during his childhood in Shanghai. But as the book progresses the genre becomes as unreliable as the narrator (another thing I love, unreliable narrators). Throughout the novel for me there was a building sense of anxiety as I kept thinking, this can't be right, there's something missing in this st More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 27, 2008

Debbie rated it:

Ishiguro has a very distant, formal voice, which at times works against his stories, in my opinion. His characters have to be squeezed into his voice, as opposed to a voice suited for character. This bothers me a bit and makes all his books seem too similar.

That said, he is a great storyteller. His narrative moves very well. He has an innate talent for putting this energy into his work and knows how to tangle a story with a bit of intrigue, yet still make his complex and original th More...

0 comments like

Jan 27, 2012

Eda rated it:

I read this book because I had read 'The Remains of the Day' and 'Never Let Me Go.'

Ishiguro has a very distinct writing style. He creates this almost murky atmosphere that makes your head spin. The narrator has such a muddled voice, but the way Ishiguro flows through the mind of the narrator is very humanistic. Jumping from thought to thought, memory to memory, forgetting some things while mis-remembering others, it is how people actually think.

The story itself is kind of More...

0 comments like

Oct 13, 2011

Chelsea rated it:

The book focuses on Christopher Banks, a detective whose parents were abducted at a young age for fighting against the import of Indian opium in to China. Christopher grows up and, after making a name for himself as a detective, decides to side his most important case ever – what precisely happened to his parents when they were abducted years ago. The case sends him back in to the streets of war-torn Shanghai and forces him to choose between the woman he loves, the life he has created for himsel More...

0 comments like

Oct 08, 2011

June rated it:

I really loved this book.

As with the last Ishiguro book I read, there is a fascinating relationship between the reader and the narrator, an unreliable voice of a someone wrestling with his past and his memories. I cared deeply about Christopher and his quest to solve the mystery of his parents' disappearance, even though I came to question the way he saw and recalled his story - for example as it emerged that his view of himself as a schoolboy was so clearly at odds with the realit More...

0 comments like

Aug 25, 2011

Judith rated it:

I listened to audio version of this book and kept thinking I was missing chapters or I had somehow obtained the abridged version because the plot wasn't making any sense. So mid-way through the audio, I got the book and read it, and then started reading it again, NOT because I liked it, but because I have never read such a strangely constructed work of fiction.

I am still at a loss. Was this a satire on British Imperialism? Was it meant to be a fantasy? I kept thinking there was g More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 26, 2011

speciallyi rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

Jan 12, 2011

Jon rated it:

I picked this up simply because I greatly admired two other books by Ishiguro, Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. It has similar themes to both those books, and it has some unforgettable passages, but finally it was a disappointment. I was relieved to see that the author himself once admitted that it wasn't his best book. Reviewers apparently agreed. I had hoped that it would be his take on the detective novel, since the main character is an allegedly renowned English detective in search of More...

0 comments like

Dec 15, 2010

Jane rated it:

I recently joined a book discussion club at our local library. This was the selected book by the group. What a disappointment!! I labored to proceed through the first half of the book which I can describe as about as fascinating as watching paint dry. The second half was full of unbelievable content. The author takes a large amount of time describing the time when Christopher and his Japanese friend Akira are children and steal a small bottle from a servant's room. A great deal of descripti More...

1 comment like

Nov 20, 2010

Andy rated it:

This was a genuinely exciting novel. Like others of Ishiguro's works, (if I remember right) its narrative mode is a conversational first-person style, with journalistic chronology in which the narrator relays sections of the story to the reader without know what happens beyond the end of the current section. Since the story is seen entirely through the lens of the narrator's perspective, the gap between his understanding and reality is a key component of the story's tension, as well as the centr More...

0 comments like

Oct 24, 2010

Melinda rated it:

I got this book from the library to read while waiting on Ishiguro's book "Never Let Me Go".

The writing is very well done, and the plot promised to be interesting. However I found myself never really liking the main character or caring what happened to him.

Christopher Banks grew up in Shanghai in the early 1900's. When he is about 10, his parents disappear without a trace. Banks moves to England to be raised by an elderly aunt. He is educated at Cambridge, and More...

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Oct 14, 2010

Scott rated it:

I would say that this book is one of those that was good but I was expecting more. Again Ishiguro takes a view of life that reaches back in to childhood. This book was the book Ishiguro had to write to get the tone and mood right for Never Let Me Go. But because of the similarities in the tone and style of the book it was hard not to expect the same amount of wonder and connection to the characters, and this book doesn't do as good a job at these things. Also I felt like the holes in the nar More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)