The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
London: Faber & Faber, 2015 ISBN 9780571315048
I really should read more Kazuo Ishiguro The Buried Giant is a wonderful novel of love and loss, of remembering and forgetting, and of war and vengeance. It is also a wonderfully simple story of an adventure.
Set in a Britain after the death of King Arthur, the reader is brought into the life of Axl and Beatrice, an old Briton couple who have set upon travelling to their son, who lives in a Saxon village several days hence. As the story develops, we are led to understand that a great forgetfulness has descended on the land: people cannot remember their past, they forget everything....Axl and Beatrice struggle to remember what their son looked like, or which way they have to go to get to his village. They do know that they need to begin their journey by travelling from their Briton village to the nearest Saxon village.
When they arrive they see the Saxons turn against one of their own - a young boy who has been attacked by Ogres, and rescued by the warrior Wistan. Wistan employs Axl and Beatrice to aid him in getting Edwin away to safety,while promising to assist them in their own journey.
As they travel, it becomes clear that the forgetfulness in the land is caused by the great dragon Querig's breath, which creates a mist that covers all. The band meet Sir Gawain, who has been tasked with slaying the dragon, and he assists them in their journey.
And what is their journey for? For Axl and Beatrice, it is a journey that deepens their love, teaches them forgiveness, and leads to the final journey when they must be parted. Axl is revealed as one who tried to bring Britons and Saxons together under Arthur, but was betrayed when the Britons broke the promises Axl made on Arthur's behalf. Gawain is shown not as the protector of all and dragon-slayer, but complicit in the massacre of the Saxons, and actually sworn to protect Querig and keep the people in the mist. Wistan, a Saxon warrior brought up by Britons, has actually been sworn by his king to slay Querig, to let the memories of past slaughter seed the slaughter to come, when Saxons are to rule.
These bigger issues and questions are wrapped in what seems to be the simplest and oldest of tales: the quest. Both Wistan and Gawain have more traditional journeys, but Axl and Beatrice have the greater one, to bring their love back from the precipice of forgetfulness and in the process to not only reaffirm their bond, but to show those that wish to hate that love is stronger.
At the end, when the boatman is ready to take Beatrice to the island of the dead to be re-united with her son, Axl knows that he wont be far behind.
Ishiguro has used the simplest of language to evoke the ancient past, where mythology blends with the mundane. The evocation is completely successful - the reader is drawn completely into the world he has created - a simple world, but one where great things are brewing.
A wonderful book.
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