From the Bookshelf of Constant Reader…

An Artist of the Floating World

Kazuo Ishiguro

Start date: August 15, 2009

Finish date: August 15, 2009

Discussion: Reading List

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Reading List

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What Members Thought

Aug 05, 2009 Melissa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: constant-reader

An autumnal, ruminative walk back through a man's life as re-imagined in his seemingly placid retirement. The need to find a suitable marriage partner for his younger daughter leads to a slow unfolding of elements of his career as a painter, with ideals, perspectives and achievements whose value shifts with the larger catastrophe that hits his nation.

The discussion of painters' use of perspective, color, line, and theme I found oddly but pleasingly reminiscent of a major strand in Pamuk's My Nam ...more

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Aug 02, 2009 Jonathan rated it it was amazing

The Remains of the Day -- in Japan. This book is similar to Ishiguro's better known story of a reserved English butler, but the context is totally different. An elderly, retired painter is looking back on his life, deconstructing his own angst over what he believes to be grave mistakes that contributed to the downfall of traditional Japanese society after World War II. The narrator is, by his own admission, not to be trusted for accurate transcripts of the dramatic conversations and events that ...more

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Nov 23, 2008 Jessica rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: post-world-war-ii, japan, 1001

Having spent my formative years in Japan, Ishiguro's work is an unusual form of intellectual comfort food for me - he captures beautifully the sometimes frustrating but deeply realistic obliqueness that typifies Japanese life, and I always feel a sense of home in that. And I know I've said this a thousand times before, but no one better captures how we put blinkers on ourselves to avoid seeing our worst traits than Ishiguro. ...more

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