tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post6368314522023170920..comments2024-02-03T13:09:38.313+00:00Comments on Mirabilis - Year of Wonders: The Buried Giant: some treasure here, but more spadework requiredLeo Hartashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14417174942647091006noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-72215781383111432712015-04-29T12:32:22.405+01:002015-04-29T12:32:22.405+01:00Thanks, Matthew. I was a little worried that the r...Thanks, Matthew. I was a little worried that the review came across as too negative. Despite all my gripes, I found plenty to enjoy and I'm glad that's the impression it gave you.Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-7282033429328980252015-04-29T09:33:06.052+01:002015-04-29T09:33:06.052+01:00Hi Dave - thanks for a genuinely engaged review: m...Hi Dave - thanks for a genuinely engaged review: most I've read have been either for or against without finding the middle ground that allows for some decent discussion (I'm probably guilty of this myself). In fact, a good deal of my own pleasure in the book is a mystery to me - quite why I'm prepared to forgive the needless expository passages, or found the dawdling and wholly undramatic pace somehow fitting, I couldn't quite say. Nice then, to read a more carefully examined opinion of the book than my own, and useful in helping to consider some of my own views of it.<br /><br />My review: <a href="http://www.bibliofreak.net/2015/04/review-buried-giant-by-kazuo-ishiguro.html" rel="nofollow">The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro</a> Matthew Selwynhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00723650905588749638noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-71945796884551752652015-04-01T20:01:28.111+01:002015-04-01T20:01:28.111+01:00Literary fiction is cripplingly terrified of being...Literary fiction is cripplingly terrified of being seen as cheaply gratifying, that's for sure. It's become the nice manners of storytelling, the "don't eat with your mouth full" - and it shouldn't be. Adam Mars-Jones was even harder on the book than I've been on that score.<br /><br />It is of course obvious that Gawain is protecting the dragon long before they fight. Hence the interminable waffle that Ishiguro subjects us to with Gawain drawing his sword, talking about it, then moseying on up the hill, and more talk, and more. I got the mutual respect thing, sure, but I didn't need them to keep going on about it. The stilted dialogue style that Ishiguro chose didn't make that any easier to bear, and if he eschewed a YA/genre brand of surprise then I would say look at Brontë, Nabokov, Orwell, Dickens, Andrew Miller - a hundred authors who can write a novel without being nervous of the craft of storytelling, and deliver genuine thrills and surprises without coming across like a Suzanne Collins wannabe, just as a good film director can shock, dismay and even move us to tears without being blatant about it.<br /><br />A writer needs to play the reader the way a performer plays his or her audience. That's the job of storytelling, if it's done with any guts. To do that, the writer must be aware of the feelings and expectations they're creating in the reader. The taste for anticlimax that Mars-Jones notes, and the unfolding of telegraphed events that bored me, are common traits among writers of literary fiction who perhaps feel that manipulating the reader is a tad ill-mannered. In Ishiguro's case, I don't think it was deliberate. I felt that he was flailing about with that sequence, trying to figure out a way to add the tension he knew was lacking. But if he says, no, I wanted it to be predictable and tedious, that's the whole point - well, in that case I think a Man Booker prize beckons.Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-60440022158934985702015-04-01T19:03:21.434+01:002015-04-01T19:03:21.434+01:00I'm persuaded by many of the quibbles, but not...I'm persuaded by many of the quibbles, but not as much by the first objection.<br />It was already pretty obvious, even to the amnesic old folks, that Gawain was protecting the dragon well before the two men fight. To have a "sudden fight scene" would be cheesy and make the book more like YA or genre fiction (i.e. cheaply gratifying). It's more indicative of the mutual respect and understanding that they have as warriors, and better acknowledges the inevitability that a wakeful reader already has, that they fake-casually but deliberately mosey into the topic rather than have an unconvincing "SURPRISE!" moment. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com