When We Were Orphans: A Novel
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.48 (643 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0375724400 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 335 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-02-03 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Now, more than twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in London society; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him fame has done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents' alleged kidnappings. From the Booker Prize-winning, bestselling author of Remains of the Daycomes this stunning work of soaring imagination.Born in early-twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age of nine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthine city of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own, painful past, only to find that war is ravaging Shanghai beyond recognition-and that his own recollections are proving as difficult to trust as the people around him.Masterful, suspenseful and psychologically acute, When We Were Orphansoffers a profound meditation on the shifting quality of memory, and the possibility of avenging one’s past.
Is the Japanese soldier he meets really Akira? Are his parents really being held in a house in the Chinese district? And who is Mr. But as Christopher pursues his investigation, the boundaries between fact and fantasy begin to evaporate. Faced with such a narrator, the reader is forced to become a detective too, chasing crumbs of truth through the labyrinth of Christopher's memory. Ishiguro writes in the first person, but from the beginning there are cracks in Christopher's carefully restrained prose, suggestions that his version of the world may not be the most reliable. When We Were Orphans is an extraordinary feat of sustained, perfectly controlled imagination, and in Christopher Banks the author has created one of his most memorable characters. Ishiguro has never been one for verbal pyrotechnics, but the unruffled surface of this haunting novel only adds to its emotional power. His family's fate continues to haunt him, howe
Anthony Learmonth said Somewhat tedious, "Old Chap"!. Out of respect for the author's reputation, I read this book to the endwhich was more than I achieved for last book of Ishiguro's that I read. Ultimately I found WWWO quite disappointing. To be honest, it takes many pages to tell a relatively simple story. However, the chief issue i have is that the story revolves almost wholly around the character of Christopher Banks - and he's a deeply uninteresting, passive and ultimately deluded character w. Paul Roche said Interesting Read but ultimately disappointing. I loved "Never Let Me Go" by this author and when I saw this title on a list of 50 great mysteries I had to have it. The writing is quite formal, akin to "Woman in White" or even "In Search of Lost Time." I like formal even with its constant digressions. The characters were well-drawn and interesting but ultimately not people I cared about.*** Possible Spoilers to follow****I enjoy unreliable narrator stories, my favorite being "The Horned Man.". A Fascinating Exploration of Childhood's Lasting Power Ethan Cooper Self-contained precision is an apt description for the voice of Christopher Banks, the narrator of WHEN WE WERE ORPHANS. Besides striking a credible tone for an upper-crust English gentleman of the 1930's, this formal voice is just right for a man who keeps his emotional distance from his childhood and its traumatizing loss of his parents. This voice, and its cast of mind, keeps the pain away, even as that pain shapes the narrator's adult life.T