a pale view of hills
by kazuo ishiguro
★★★☆☆
dates read: 7/19/22 - 7/20/22 ! this review contains spoilers !
"In his highly acclaimed debut, A Pale View of Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro tells the story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. Retreating into the past, she finds herself reliving one particular hot summer in Nagasaki, when she and her friends struggled to rebuild their lives after the war. But then as she recalls her strange friendship with Sachiko - a wealthy woman reduced to vagrancy - the memories take on a disturbing cast."
a pale view of hills was my first ishiguro book and i honestly wish that i had started with a different one of his books. despite being a relatively short novel, i was pretty confused.
i'll be honest. after reading this book, i didn't get it. it took looking at other people's thoughts and interpretations for me to finally get that etsuko and sachiko are the same person. and even though i didn't notice the twist while reading, i think it's genius. this is a book that i know i'll eventually need to re-read in order to fully appreciate it for everything that it is. but unfortunately, until i am able to do that, i found this book to be just okay.
aside from the true nature of this novel, there were other parts of a pale view of hills that i felt were unnecessary. the relationship between etsuko and jiro's father didn't lead to anything important within the plot and the altercation she had with jiro's childhood friend didn't serve any purpose. this book is short, being about 200 pages and yet it still contained a decent amount of filler.
the split point of view between etsuko when she was young in japan and etsuko when she's a mother in england was compelling, especially since as a reader you're trying to figure out why her daughter committed suicide. but the only way to answer that mystery, is to make the connection that etsuko and sachiko are the same person which is something that i wasn't able to figure out while reading. therefore, based off of my experience reading a pale view of hills (without the research afterwards), it left me feeling unsatisfied. but i attest that more to myself than ishiguro.
the idea behind a pale view of hills is honestly really clever. i just wish i was able to reach such important conclusions on my own while reading.
