Come and chat to KAZUO ISHIGURO about his extraordinary writing career on Thurs 9 April, 9-10pm

[TillyBookClub]

Kazuo Ishiguro OBE is a multiple nominee and winner of the Booker Prize and dozens of other international awards. Throughout his hugely successful and varied career, from the exquisitely poignant REMAINS OF THE DAY to the dystopian NEVER LET ME GO, he has often explored the idea of memory: how it shapes us, its fickle nature, how it distorts the choices we make.

Ishiguro’s new novel, THE BURIED GIANT, is an adventure fantasy, set in a Dark Ages Britain populated with knights, giants, monks and dragons. All the inhabitants appear to have suffered a loss of memory. The central characters, Axl and Beatrice, are an elderly married couple on a journey to find their son. As with all fantastical quests, they encounter mysterious strangers and dangerous escapades. Throughout the novel, an overriding question hangs in the air: is it worth suffering painful memories, or better to live in ignorance?

For more details, go to our book of the month page. You might also like Mark Lawson's interview with the author on BBC iplayer.

Faber have very generously offered 50 hardbacks of The Buried Giant to give to Mumsnetters. To claim yours, please fill in your details on the book of the month page. We’ll post on this thread when the copies have gone. If you’re not lucky enough to bag one of those, you can always get a copy here.

We have the very rare and special opportunity to talk to Kazuo Ishiguro when he joins us on Thursday April 9th, 9-10pm for a live web chat. The discussion will range from his latest book to his previous bestsellers and future projects. So whether you have read THE BURIED GIANT, or are a lifelong fan of REMAINS OF THE DAY, or would like a few tips from one of the UK’s most experienced and acclaimed writers, please come along and say hello. Look forward to seeing you on Thurs 9th…

Kazuo - Never Let Me Go has never me let go since the week it came out. That's longer than most of my love affairs, jobs, houses. Thanks - sort of. Would you ever do another dystopia? Please? Or do you hanker for pastures new to tackle every time?

Kazuo, I will confess that this is the first time I've read one of your books. (Promise I am going to order others!). I loved TBG and zipped through it as I couldn't put it down. When trying to describe it to others, I found myself drawing comparisons with Tolkien and I've since read reviews which draw similar comparisons. How do you feel about this?

@Ellisisland

I just finished this book and loved it. I felt like I was reading someone's dream. It was a wonderfully haunting book that has left me thinking about it long after I have finished reading.

My question is : I first read Remains of the Day as an A level text. What do you think of your books being studied in this way? Do you think that kind of analysis adds or takes away from the books and the enjoyment of reading them ?

I think so much depends on how a book's taught in the classroom. Good teaching can really inspire young people and turn them into life-long readers. But we all know people who were put off by 'Eng Lit', or who weren't put off but have become strangely analytic readers, so that we hardly recognize the books they're discussing even if they're ones we know well and love. But I think good teaching at schools and universities play a huge role in making us better readers, readers who get more out of reading. Maybe more importantly, learning to read critically (asking questions such as: 'Is this emotion I'm feeling when reading really earned, or am I just being subjected to sentimental manipulation?' ) allows young people to develop a more sophisticated attitude to their own feelings, their friends, their important relationships - that's to say, to the world around them. I'm really proud and pleased my books (Remains and Never Let Me Go, now a GSCE text) are taught at schools and colleges. Curious to know what you think. Were you put off Remains of the D by having to read it for an exam?

@DuchessofMalfi

My question for Kazuo Ishiguro is - what are your feelings about the films of your novels? Do you feel that they do justice to your novels? I recall an interview with Carlos Ruiz Zafon (not the one on here though) where he said he was reluctant to allow his novels to be turned into films, preferring them to remain with his readers' imaginations. What do you think?

I have read (and seen the film of) The Remains of the Day and loved both - so that one worked for me, but so many other films of favourite novels have turned out to be a disappointment. I read Never Let me Go recently and found it a thoroughly engrossing and thought-provoking read. It raised so many questions in my mind that I'm still thinking about it weeks later, but wonder whether the film could ever do the same?

This is in reply to both pippidoeswhatshewants and DuchessofMalfi. About film adaptations. My attitude is roughly this. I think the film has to be a good film that stands by itself. It shouldn't be regarded as a 'translation'. I would get upset if my French translator said to me: 'I hope you don't mind, but I've changed certain scenes around, including the ending, because I wanted to express my own personal vision and bring the French version round to match it.' But I think if a film-maker said this about a film adaptation, provided the vision was strong and valid, I would positively encourage such an approach. (I should say I speak as someone who's also worked as a screenwriter, on the other side of the fence, as it were.) I think too many film adaptations are disappointing not because they're not faithful enough, but because they cripple themselves from the outset as cinema by being too loyal to the source material. As pippidoeswhatshewants says, only a fraction of a novel can, in a literal sense, be in the film: the average screenplay is around 100 pages generously spaced out - probably, at best, a sixth of the number of words in the novel, if it's a short one. So to work as a film, there has to be a proper adaptation. (TV, with the longer running time, can take a much more page by page approach, but even here, huge hunks will have to be 'lost'.) Emotions and aspects of relationships, say, conveyed by pages of words must now be translated into a glance, a reaction shot, an actor's hunched, defensive back on hearing what should be good news, etc.
I always try to encourage film-makers to err on the side of being too cavalier with the original novel, because I think there's a bigger chance of the film being a proper artistic statement in its own right when the film-makers behave as artists, not as translators. My book will always remain the same - safe inside its covers. Let's see something special when a film gets made.

Delighted to encounter another fan of Villette.

Kazuo, you've described yourself elsewhere as having a 'mundane prose style'. I wouldn't agree, but your prose is certainly distinctively restrained, even deliberately flattened in effect. Given that you clearly don't aim for great linguistic richness of imagery etc, how would you characterise what you are in fact aiming for in a novel? Are your aims more narrative/structural? Moral? What kind of pleasure do you aim to give your readers?

Fascinated by your answer to Bouncing Jellyfish. My strongest response to The Buried G was the recognition that the barbarity of the past is only just underfoot in almost all places (particularly resonant when Axl and Beatrice are walking over that burial ground, and you think of all the horror that has built this pretty pastoral England).

You have so many questions to answer that I don't mind if you don't get to this, but my thought was: do you think it is possible to attain civilised society without bloodshed and barbarity? I can't think of many societies that have achieved it...

@hackmum

Never Let Me Go is one of my favourite books - I think it's extraordinary.

It made me think about how we can readily accept the most terrible injustices if we are brought up with them and come to see them as normal. I just wondered whether you had any particular modern parallels in mind when you wrote it, or whether you saw it as having universal application?

By the way, I just wanted to ask: why is Mumsnet so keen to flag up my OBE? I'm quite proud of it and all that, but I hadn't thought about it in years until I saw this webchat flagged up with Kazuo Ishiguro OBE. No objection: just wondered what this was all about. It's a bit like being invited to the Queen's Garden Party or something...

Anyway, yes, Never Let Me Go. I think your comment is a quite haunting one. Yes, I think a lot of the time, we accept miserable, sometimes awful fates - not only accept them, but try our very best with the cruel hand we've been dealt. We try and take a sense of dignity and pride from performing our given role well. In movies (and to a lesser extent in novels), characters trapped in awful situations eventually rebel and escape, or triumph over the oppressing forces, and that undoubtedly happens in real life too. But much more often in life, people stay in miserable marriages, exploitative jobs, awful political systems, and just try and do their best. People run towards the enemy guns even when doubting the cause they fight for. A lot of the time, people stay where they are and fulfil the role given to them, because that's part of human nature. To some extent, this sad heroism, if you can call it that, is reflected in the attitude of Kathy and others in NLMG.
You ask about particular modern parallels. Well, the biggest one of all is mortality. We can't escape ageing and death, even if we're lucky enough to live long enough to face these common experiences. NLMG is ultimately a metaphor for the human condition. The young people in the book go through what older people go through, and face the same questions: what's really important to get right in life? How does love fit into it? What about friendship and forgiveness? Can love defeat death in any sense at all?

Thank you for answering my question .

Oh dear! I think I'm going to cry. Your phrase about the book safe inside the covers is so graphic and so true - if you don't like the film version the book is always there.

@hackmum

Never Let Me Go is one of my favourite books - I think it's extraordinary.

It made me think about how we can readily accept the most terrible injustices if we are brought up with them and come to see them as normal. I just wondered whether you had any particular modern parallels in mind when you wrote it, or whether you saw it as having universal application?

@hackmum

The web chat will be on this thread, I think, Annie.

I have another question. I really enjoyed The Buried Giant, though I was puzzled by it too. What was your literary inspiration for the book? Was it works of medieval literature and earlier, such as Gawain and the Green Knight, Piers Plowman and Beowulf? Or was it fantasy novels such as Lord of the Rings? Or a combination of those? (I don't normally read fantasy, and I haven't read Gawain etc so I think some of the allusions were lost on me.)

Here's an answer to your other question. You say 'some of the allusions were lost on me.' Let me assure you, there are no allusions you need to 'get' in The BG. It's meant to be completely self-sufficient. It helps if you twig that the Boatman has something to do with rowing people over to Death, but aside from that, I don't think anyone needs to have read any old literature or to know anything at all about ancient folklore or myths. I personally dislike books that rely on the reader 'getting' allusions and references, and my own novels never rely on things like that.

Yes, I do like Gawain and The Green Knight, which is a very enjoyable and intriguing narrative poem centring on a bizarre head-chopping game, but I don't think it has a huge amount to do with The BG. Although I was inspired by a passing verse in the poem, that describes the Britain of that time as the young hero rides on horseback from one castle to another. I also love Beowulf, and The Odyssey and The Iliad, which could all be called 'fantasy' works by today's standards, I suppose. (I have arguments with my daughter about this: she claims these aren't 'fantasy' because of the context and time in which they were composed, but I don't quite follow her argument. I'll have to get her to spell it out again. As far as I can see, they have strange creatures in them, just like contemporary fantasy.)

I wasn't inspired by Tolkien or contemporary fantasy writers because as yet I'm not familiar with their work (though I mean to remedy this very soon). Homer (see above), old Japanese folk-tales I was brought up on, American Western movies (especially Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Leone and John Ford films like 'The Searchers') had much more of an influence on The BG. The figure of the ageing Sir Gawain in my novel owes much to certain ageing gunfighters caught by the camera as a solitary rider under a big sky, a figure out of time, belonging to a bygone era, but still determined to carry out his role, the only one he knows, to the bitter end.

Thanks for answering mine too - really interesting answer.

@ChampagneTastes

I'm thrilled that you're appearing on Mumsnet; you have been my favourite author since I picked up When We Were Orphans a few years ago. I have The Buried Giant upstairs, waiting until I have a free weekend to read it all at once.

My question is this: all of your novels appear to have some crucial bit of information hidden, unsaid or unrevealed. This is probably what I love most but also find most frustrating about your books! Is it deliberate? And if so, do YOU know what is missing or do you simply imply it?

Thank you so much for your wonderful writing - it is always a joy to pick up one of your books.

yes, there are often crucial hidden things in my novels, and the momentum of the story often revolves around the veils coming steadily away to reveal the hidden things. This of course is deliberate. Usually the novel has this structure not because I'm being coy or deliberately frustrating, but because I'm trying to chart the painful process by which the narrator gradually comes to terms with his/her most painful memories, or memories that imply a life much sadder or more empty than the one the narrator previously owned up to. It's this journey away from self-deception to acceptance of the truth about oneself, however painful, that I'm interested in writing about in books like Orphans or Remains of the D. I'm certainly not trying to withhold any piece of information for the sake of it! Hopefully, by the end of each book, all such 'mysteries' should be cleared up. (Unless we're talking about The Unconsoled, which I admit can be a bit baffling even at the end!)

Charlotte Bronte's two great novels, Jane Eyre and Villette, had a huge influence on my writing, but I'd more or less grown up by then.

Adore both those books too.

Ahem!

Just seen that you answered my question about TBG too - thanks so much for that. I'd twigged the boatman allusion (which wasn't too difficult) but love the idea of Sir Gawain as an ageing gunfighter.

I usually avoid films of books I love as they quite often spoil the book for me, especially if, as you say Kazuo, they try to stay too close to the book. The images in the film never live up to the pictures I've imagined. If film makers move further away from the book, the film becomes a separate entity to me.

When you build up a mystery for readers, do you worry that they will find the eventual revelation either too ordinary or too mystifying?

This is the first book by you that I have read and I am very inspired now to read the others! My question for you is what have you learned about yourself as a person and as a writer having written this book, that you did not know beforehand?

I read in several languages and sometimes wonder if a translation will ever do the original justice. Have you ever come across unexpected interpretations of your books in different cultures, or does the core translate?

Are we going to have to wait another 10 years for the next book? Why did you ha e such a long gap this time?

I've just de-lurked after 4.5 years to ask a question on this thread, to find that it's been beautifully answered already in the response to hackmum's post, when you said that Never Let Me Go is essentially a metaphor for the human condition. I'll therefore just say (not to waste the effort in registering with Mumsnet!) that NLMG profoundly moved me: it is one of the most affecting novels I have ever encountered. I was so desperately sad for the protagonists until I realised that our own situation, given our short life spans and huge capacity for love, is not so far removed. I wanted to add my voice to the praise and gratitude for this novel, not to mention your others I have read. The Buried Giant is next!

Thank you for writing The Buried Giant and for coming on here to talk to us about it! I enjoyed reading the book- it really made me think both about myths of this country, but also about our dark "missing" history too.

The book has also lead me to talk to others about it who have read your other books and together we were really praising how amazing it was that you could write such wide range of different books. I would love to read more of your books as I enjoyed this one!

I loved how you used Arthurian legends in The Buried Giant. I also read somewhere that Tolkin was an inspiration to you too as was Beowulf. Did you have any other literary influences in writing the book?

@JennyWreny

This book is quite different from the type of book I usually read, but I enjoyed it so much, the writing really is beautiful and it makes it very easy to read and hard to put down.

I loved the connection between Axl and Beatrice and wondered if you based them (or at least their relationship) on anyone you know.

I also wanted to ask you (hope you don?t mind this question) about the first draft of the book. I have read that your wife didn?t like it and you basically started again. That must be a hard thing to do. Were you tempted to give up with it and try something completely different (I?m glad you persevered)?

After having recently read ?Elizabeth is Missing?, I was amused to find ?The Buried Giant? - also had characters with poor memory! Does this make the writing easier (you don?t have to have to detail too much background history of the characters), or harder (because you have to plan their history, so you know which bits they are going to forget)? - I hope that makes sense!

I don't like to base actual characters on people I know. But I do often observe relationships from life and that goes into some of the relationships I portray. In general, I find that if I focus on relationships in my stories - what is an interesting relationship? Is this parent-child relationship a cliche that doesn't get beyond first base? Does this relationship surprise and turn and twist and change? etc, etc, - then the characters take care of themselves. My writing life became much easier when I figured this out.

Yes, my wife read (not the first draft) but the first 60 pages of an earlier draft and told me I had to start again from scratch. I asked her what she suggested I changed, and she said, no, what I meant was you have to start from scratch. Not a word of this can survive. I did put it aside, and I wrote my short story book, Nocturnes, and I also had a couple of films to worry about, and song lyrics for jazz singer Stacey Kent. But I didn't 'give up'. I often come back to things after a couple of years and it goes better second or third time. Some missing piece of the jig-saw has turned up in the meantime. Never Let Me Go, for instance, was my third attempt at that story.

A final question if I may (you already have tons of better ones, but here goes) ...

All your books (at least the ones I've read so far) appear to contain a constant theme surrounding memory and loss. However, I'm sure your readers do not fail to be taken by surprise at how different genres are touched upon with each book. In 'When We Were Orphans', we have the detective novel; in 'Never Let Me Go' there's science fiction. Now, with 'The Buried Giant', we have Tolkien-style mythical fantasy.

QUESTION:- What's next? Is there another book on the horizon, and if so, do you have a specific genre or theme in mind?

Sorry, I took so long writing my post someone had already asked my question and you've answered!