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Jul 26, 2011

Ceridwen rated it:

I had 15 seconds during which to bolt down into the library – no not a typo; for reasons known only to late-70s civic leaders, my branch library is underground – and grab an audiobook or two for the ride north. I'm not a big audio person – I have no regular commute, and my home life is too loud and distracting for home listening – but I like listening to books on solo car rides. Anyway, so this was swept up in my arms without much thought other than I'd read one other Ishiguro and liked it.
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18 comments like (26 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2010

K.D. rated it:

A nocturne is a “composition of a dreamy character, expressive of sentiment appropriate to evening or night”. Traditionally such nocturnal sentiments include regret, chagrin, melancholy, perhaps a dash of ennui – the pastel twilight tones at the lighter end of the spectrum that darken to gloom, rage and black despair.

Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall is the first collection of short stories by the Japanese-English novelist, Kazuo Ishiguro. As the subtitle indicates, it is composed More...

6 comments like (19 people liked it)

Mar 20, 2011

Isabelle rated it:

A very fine collection of five short stories, all revolving around music and, as in all of Kazuo Ishiguro's books, loneliness. As always, he is a master of restraint, which does not diminish the pathos of the stories, on the contrary!
In each of those stories, something gets unraveled for each of the characters who collide with each other during that particular moment in their lives.... and of course all this happens to music, for music, because of music.
This is all tremendously lyric More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 29, 2011

Esther rated it:

I have a problem with Kazuo Ishiguro. And my problem with Nocturnes is the same one I had with his last novel, Never Let Me Go: I can't figure out why I didn't like them more.
Despite his deceivingly simple prose I am very aware of his tremendous skill. I find many of his themes fascinating. I am sufficiently interested in his characters to keep on reading. I admire his resistance against easy resolutions or explicative characterizations. I marvel at his ability to create moments that are More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 07, 2010

FreshGrads rated it:

Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall is Kazuo Ishiguro's first collection of short stories after six successful novels. His latest book is made up of a quintet of short stories—Crooner, Come Rain or Come Shine, Malvern Hills, Nocturne and Cellists—where he explores love, music and the passing of time as dreams and relationships might start getting dusty.

Ishiguro, also a guitarist and a former chorister, was winner of the Booker Prize for novel-turned-film, The Remains of the More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 18, 2010

Jana rated it:

Ishiguro is liquid. Can I say it like that? There is not a single thing in these stories where his writing isn't compatible with how a great beginning or the end of a story should look like. Or how a story should interestingly develop and how characters should be engaging and how... These nocturnes are almost perfect, and yet, they are somehow not.

As if they need that jump from the springboard to make a perfect somersault and maybe end it with some surprisingly unexpected flip or s More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 30, 2011

Yumi rated it:

At times I forgot I was reading Ishiguro and thought I was reading Haruki Murakami, and that is definitely a compliment. Ishiguro always works better for me when he keeps things simple instead of overwrought.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 16, 2011

Venus rated it:

زیبایی دختران را تا نیمه ی راه می برد . کافی است از آن درست استفاده نکنند تا مثل روسپی ها با آن ها رفتار شود.
من امیدوارم زنت برگردد . واقعا امیدوارم . اما اگر برنگشت خوب تو باید به فکر اینده ات باشی . شاید زن فوق العاده ای باشد اما زندگی بزرگ تر از عاشق بودن است

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 26, 2012

Ariadna73 rated it:

09-01-2011- I finished the five stories and I liked them all. Some are more "rounded" than others (for example, "come rain or come shine" ends abruptly whereas "Nocturne" has a very defined ending) I liked the way the author mentioned and analized music in a way that made me feel it without even listening to the actual songs. And some of the stories are really hilarious ("Crooner", "Marven Hills") I lauged a lot with the different funny scenes. I More...

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Aug 10, 2011

Stephen added it

My first Ishiguro read. The scenes in the stories (there are five of them) are magnificent and lack mendacity; some are comedic and many are hinged loosely to a fabric of loss, be it time, place, or even that which is called opportunity. Even then, the characters in the mise en scène vaguely respond to a lambent sense of loss and misgiving, which plays outside it, not being exercised by it, rather slipping through windows (in Crooner), outside terraces, in the bridge passage of an unfinished son More...

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Mar 05, 2010

Sara added it

Kazuo Ishiguro s Nocturnes is a collection of five stories about musicians, all of which come to their climax at nighttime. In theory it sounds like a gimmick, but this common thread ties the stories together into a fugue on love and art: not art that brings us together, but art that reflects and magnifies the distances between us. Several of the stories in this book turn to comedy in a way that may seem new to fans of the author, but when I think back on them, it is the undercurrent of grief i More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 05, 2009

Lia rated it:

This was the first I read by Kazuo Ishiguro and I remember thinking "how did this guy win a Booker?" but then I read The Remains of the Day immediately thereafter, which I loved. But I found this collection of short stories very weak -- there's a couple of good scenes and clever ideas but by and large it's readable but really quite ordinary.

My main gripe would be that all the stories are too similar. As well as the motifs of music and nightfall flagged by the title, there' More...

1 comment like (13 people liked it)

Feb 01, 2012

Joe rated it:

This book illustrates the blundering awkwardness of words compared to music. Turns out Ishiguro is really boring when he's writing about normal people. He seems to entertain a lot of misconceptions about music and musicians, as do even well-researched writers when they venture into this terrain. Worst was "Cellists," which summed up the huge problems of the collection; Eloise's "virtuosity" - which she bafflingly maintains despite not being a musician - depicts music a cul More...

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Oct 23, 2011

notgettingenough rated it:

I’ve never read a book before that starts off with a threat to sue the reviewer, in capital letters, no less:

THESE ARE UNCORRECTED PROOFS, ALL QUOTATIONS OR ATTRIBUTIONS SHOULD BE CHECKED AGAINST THE BOUND COPY OF THE BOOK. WE URGE THIS FOR THE SAKE OF EDITORIAL ACURACY AS WELL AS FOR YOUR LEGAL PROTECTION.

Well. I wasn’t going to quote anything from this book, there isn’t anything that is zippily quotable. On the other hand, it just has to be done, doesn’t it? Now. In the con More...

6 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jul 26, 2011

Tenzin rated it:

Ishiguro sprinkles the stories with unsure words which are characteristically cloudy, vague and layered, making the reader doubt if something was even said - so vague is his quasi-spoken style, almost air-like, atmospheric and floating. The engrossment is with regret and self-delusion perhaps, I can never tell with Ishiguro. The stories are tempered disappointment as the protagonists share a link through their progressive relapse into irrelevancy in terms of living which is both moving and frust More...

0 comments like

Jun 09, 2011

Jeruen rated it:

If I were to pick a short story collection that I have thoroughly enjoyed, then I would pick this one.

I never picked up an Isiguro book before. I guess this is my first introduction to the novelist, and somehow, I like the fact that I picked it up. In fact, I liked it enough that I was able to finish the book within a day.

So, what is this book about? This book, as the subtitle says, is a book containing five stories of music and nightfall. I find it amazing that a writer was More...

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Feb 07, 2011

Tze-Wen rated it:

I held high hopes for Nocturnes, because the issues that it deals with – nostalgia, relationships that are not meant to be and missed chances – usually appeal to me. Unfortunately, none of these quirky stories managed to move me. I simply could not sympathize with any of the characters in the book. In my eyes, they have annoying and immature personalities, and this shows clearly in their selfish and sullen behavior. I feel that Nocturnes is in fact a lost opportunity for the author. Compared to More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jan 25, 2011

Josh rated it:

As a first-time reader of Ishiguro, I found this collection of 5 stories enlightening and wonderfully cohesive in the way they stayed true the subtitle "Five Stories of Music and Nightfall".

Set in the scenic cities of Italy, the rolling Malvern Hills and the intimate London flat, the stories run the gamut of human emotion and longing, accompanied by the strains of the cello, guitars, a saxophone and the lilt of the human voice.

The brilliance of these stories l More...

0 comments like

Jan 10, 2011

Andrew rated it:

Kazuo Ishiguro is one of my favourite authors. His books take the reader on voyages of the imagination; not just to other times and places but into the thoughts, feelings and memories of the central characters. He explores the power of the past on individual motives and actions. The unreliability of memory and the ways in which time, emotion and personal perception act as a prism to distort recollections are recurring themes.

It always takes me some pages to truly get into an Ishiguro n More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 31, 2010

Jonathan rated it:

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

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Sep 05, 2010

Bonnie rated it:

Wow, I’ve never read so many stories in which nothing happened. And that all involved musicians/people who loved music who were spectacularly unsuccessful and apparently often quite unlikeable (at least, they didn’t have many friends). Here is the plot of the stories:

Crooner: Some guy meets a famous singer from back in the day, helps him serenade his wife and finds out they’re going to divorce so the singer can make a come-back.

Come Rain or Shine: Guy in a dead-end job w More...

3 comments like (7 people liked it)

Mar 08, 2010

David rated it:

OK, I'm going to just come right out and say this: I did NOT like this book. I read Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day too many years ago to use that as a comparison, but I did read Never Let Me Go a couple of years back and that was one of my top books of 2008. Never Let Me Go stayed with me for weeks after I finished, the nuances and implications of the story were so powerful.

Quite frankly, the only reason that I finished Nocturnes was because I was so shocked that something so bad More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 20, 2010

Kathleen added it

Nocturnes, stories of music and nightfall. By Kazuo Ishiguro, narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Kirby Heyborne, Lincoln Hoppe, Simon Vance, produced by Random House Audio, downloaded from audible.com.

The title of this work is the key to all five short stories. They all involve musicians or lovers of music. The confrontation each faces is at nightfall or during the night.
As the publishers’ note explains, each story has a central character and an a central conflict. A once-popula More...

0 comments like

Dec 06, 2009

Charles rated it:

Dry without being arid, lean without being starved, the stories in Kazuo Ishiguro's new collection are studies in disjunction. They're full of characters in a state of disconnectedness – miscommunicating, misjudging, mistaking one another's motivations and intent. The trick here is that Ishiguro exploits this state of things for neither pathos nor farce, but for a funny-touching blend of the two.

Four of the five stories are narrated by musicians. A Polish-born guitarist in Venice tel More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 16, 2009

Megan rated it:

I have paid sufficient tribute to The Remains of the Day now by enduring three other Kazuo Ishiguro books: A Pale View of Hills, When We Were Orphans, and now Nocturnes. And now I'm finished reading Ishiguro for good. Nocturnes is a collection of five long-ish short stories, that were each too long and ended abruptly. Each story meandered along for twenty or thirty pages exploring the experiences of the protagonist, who was in each story a musician of some kind. Each musician/protagonist als More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Nov 12, 2009

Seth rated it:

I never know how to review collections of short stories.

It would be one thing if stories in a given collection were monolithic in terms of tone and quality. This, of course, is never the case. And is, by extension, not the case with Kazuo Ishiguro's collection of five stories, Nocturne. Three of these shorts I loved, one I liked a lot, and the other is of the variety where I'd be tempted to say, Let's just be friends, and then gradually distance myself until we were more acquaintanc More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Oct 13, 2009

Tony rated it:

Ishiguro, Kazuo. NOCTURNES. (2009). ****. The author, one of the best writing today in England, has given us five stories in this, his latest book, that all deal with music and love and the night. Although the stories are not interdependent, they do cover some of the same themes and, occassionally a character in one will reappear in another. The first story, “Crooner,” is about Tony Gardner and his wife. They are in Venice on a vacation whose secondary purpose is to ease the breakup of th More...

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Oct 11, 2009

Tattered Cover added it

Cathy L says:
Utterly sublime. These five short stories of music and nightfall just highlight what a wonderful writer Ishiguro is. Each of these stories stand on their own, but read as an ensemble, their slow & gentle power carries the reader away.

Joe says:
Wow. Just read this book in one sitting. Utterly sublime. These five short stories of music and nightfall just highlight what a wonderful writer Ishiguro is. Each of these stories stand on their own, but read as an ens More...

1 comment like

Sep 26, 2009

Stephen rated it:

This is a difficult review to write, because I have a great deal of respect for Kazuo Ishiguro as a novelist, but the short story is a different form that calls for a different set of skills. The subtlety of his prose, the limpid tone, all while describing moments of heartbreak, is utterly lost in this collection of short stories. It's like a plumber picking up an electricians toolbox.

The plots of the stories do not matter, a thematic approach will serve Nocturnes. The overriding More...

16 comments like (6 people liked it)

Sep 14, 2009

Michelle rated it:

As it says on the cover of the book, Nocturnes is a collection of five stories of music and nightfall. Just this description alone is enough to evoke a certain romanticism for me. The mood created here is almost like the balance of scales; there has to be just enough of everything to be perfect, otherwise it falls out of balance, tips over, and loses the magic it could have had.

Ishiguro managed this balance like a pro.

There is a silent beauty to the way the stories were t More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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