Axl dare not ask his neighbors, fellow residents of a hillside and bogside burrow, for help remembering, “or in this community, the past was rarely discussed.” With his wife, who bears the suggestive if un-Arthurian name Beatrice, the old man sets off on a quest in search of the past and of people forgotten. As it unfolds, Axl finds himself in the company of such stalwarts as a warrior named Wistan, who is himself given to saying such things as “he trees and moorland here, the sky itself seem to tug at some lost memory,” and eventually Sir Gawain himself. Ishiguro’s tale opens not on such a declaration but instead on a hushed tone an old man has been remembering days gone by, and the images he conjures, punctuated by visions of a woman with flowing red hair, may be truthful or a troubling dream. There be giants buried beneath the earth-and also the ancient kings of Britain, Arthur among them. A lyrical, allusive (and elusive) voyage into the mists of British folklore by renowned novelist Ishiguro ( Never Let Me Go, 2005, etc.).
0 kommentar(er)
