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When We Were Orphans
April 2022: Detective
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When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro - 4 stars
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“I am beginning to see now many things aren’t as I supposed.”
As the story opens, protagonist Christopher Banks is a detective in London in the 1920s-1930s, at least that’s what he tells us. We never get any details of his cases, so we must take his word for it. It seems he wanted to be a detective to solve the disappearance of his parents when he was ten years old and living in the Shanghai. We gradually learn more about Christopher’s childhood in the International Settlement, and his Japanese friend, Akira. He believes his parents were kidnapped due to their opposition to the opium trade. He has always planned to return to Shanghai to rescue them. Along the way, Christopher goes through successes, failures, enlightenments, and disillusionments. Primary themes are the transience of memory and nostalgia.
Christopher is drawn to other orphans. He is effectively orphaned when his parents disappear and is reared by an aunt in London. He meets Sarah, a glamorous woman whose parents are deceased, and adopts Jennifer, a young orphan girl. As Sarah states late in the narrative, “But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end as best we can. For until we do so we will be permitted no calm.”
It shifts between a version of reality (as seen through Banks’ eyes) and an almost surreal segment when he returns to Shanghai in the midst of the Sino-Japanese war (1937). He tries to locate the house where he believes his parents are still held captive. We follow him through a war-torn region near Shanghai. In this gripping, and also bizarre, segment, the reader wonders how much of this can possibly be real. Does Banks believe what he is saying? Is he mentally ill? Is he really a detective? Is this a parody of a detective story?
Even though Christopher is an adult, he comes across as extremely naïve and sheltered. He seems to be stuck in his childhood. He is chasing memories of the halcyon days of his youth before his world was shattered. My take on the surreal segment is that he finally faces the fact that the world is a pretty horrible place (and about to get worse – this was just prior to WWII).
The novel is written in elegant prose, with parts harking back to the time period in which it is set. It will likely not be very satisfying to anyone looking for a traditional detective story. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I tend to enjoy these types of quirky off-the-beaten path stories.
The audio book is brilliantly read by John Lee. His pacing, intonement, and voices are beautifully performed. I am going to find out what else he has narrated.