There's little doubt where Kazuo Ishiguro's literary origins lie -- in the ponderous and heavily symbolic novels of Henry James. Like James, Ishiguro is an immigrant in thrall to Englishness, and particularly the supposedly urbane, restrained English gentleman. Both writers, however, see through the Englishman's reserve and pride, while still remaining in some way hypnotized by it. If the result is a style that is overly mannered, decorous, cautious and middle-aged, then this is the price they pay for their infatuation.
The whole justification for Kazuo Ishiguro's deferential tone is that underneath the immaculate exterior serious themes are silently moving. If so, what are they?
As with his other books, this novel is about how history affects people's lives, but also about how people fail to respond to that history because they are caught up in fantasies of who they are and what their destiny should be, fantasies in this case rooted in childhood.
The problem with When we were Orphans is that this perception only gets to the reader late, and so a re-reading of the whole book is in effect called for. But the novel has been too unrelieved by changes of tone, humor, liveliness or, to be honest, vivid writing of any kind, to make such a re-reading a very attractive proposition.
At worst, Ishiguro appears to be aiming directly for classic status, bypassing freshness and novelty on the way. But as Hemingway said in Green Hills of Africa, writing a classic can't be a conscious aim -- all an author can hope to do is write well about the worlds he understands and feels for.
This novel will almost certainly make a stronger film than it is a book. In matters of literature though, as Hemingway pointed out, time makes its own judgments.
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