Mitch Davidson asked:

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10 years ago
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Josh

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Betty Confetti

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)[Well, I have a totally different take on this book and the ending. Axl and Beatrice live in a convalescent home and head out toward something they can't exactly articulate. Along the way, they meet dangers....people who help them...people who hurt them....people who offer them goodness despite being somewhat evil....people who offer them evil despite being somewhat good. The shards of memory come and go as an Alzheimer's patient...but all the while, they are focused on moving forward together. At some point, a memory comes that their son has died, and this reminds me of those final moments for my father who died of Alzheimer's. He had a revelation, looked at my mother, and then was gone forever. Axl was never as ill. He was her caretaker. He needed that journey to accept her fate to pass alone before he did.
This book is like The Unconsoled in that it treats a concept--sanity for The Unconsoled, memory for Buried Giant. (The Unconsoled is about a man living in an insane asylum, not some great pianist who travels the world and gives a concert....sorry if that's what folks think it was about.)
The Buried Giant offers a beautiful relationship of an older married couple. How many novels does one read today that has octogenarians as the hero? It doesn't play into silliness by having the old couple adopt the young boy. That's too predictable and impossible given their health. It's about grudges. It's about hate. All of those things for Axl and Beatrice have died as they have aged. Much as my old next door neighbors are just trying to keep their heads screwed on straight and don't give a care about politics, property issues, wealth......
This book is a beautiful read. It is firmly in place in the style of Ishiguro...We see a reality as in Remains of the Day....but is it fact or fiction? Ultimately comes down to perspective. We see the humanity of love, just as we saw it in Someone to Never Let Me Go. Love can not conquer all. For the Unconsoled, it is that self-purpose can come from within, no matter the surroundings. These are all themes of Buried Giant. If you're looking for swashbuckling, ain't here. It's gentle, careful, thoughtful, masterful. (hide spoiler)]

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Van

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Becca

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Jena Siedler

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Spark So I think, that Axl really loved his wife, but she seemed only interested in her dead son, something long past, dead thing. I know a person who still suffers, cause of the dead of his children, although they just were 6 month old. Maybe Ishiguro hisself is suffering, cause his wife or he might have lost a baby once. Or the son is just a metaphour for all the „lost and dead things, all the past things“. Beatrices mind was living in the past and seeks for „dead“ things, but Axl was living right with his wife.
She decided to live with the dead ones, with the past and axl left her, let her leave.

Axl was still living, cause he still was living in the -here and now- that is why they could not passed the ocean together.

It really is important to leave dead and past things...if we can not leave all the past things, we might suffer, like beatrice often did. Past is past, dead is dead, no matter if it was wonderful or bad, no matter if it is a dead person or past situations. Live always takes place in the here and now, not in the future and not in the past...that is why Axl seems so peaceful and calm. He CAN remember things, but it does not influence the will, that he wants to live in the n o w. We can overcome walls and mountains, if we always try to go to the now again, like axl does.

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Karen

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Gregory Coyne

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A B

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Karen

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Tomás Once the mist fades away after Querig's death, Beatrice is heartbreakingly unable to fully forgive Axl, and she dies alone. The boatman's questioning is thorough, and though he has already made up his mind after talking to Beatrice, he fills in the details in his final conversation with Axl.

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