An Artist of the Floating World [J0181]

2005 - PB With minor wear. WINNER OF THE WHITBREAD BOOK OF THE YEAR. It is 1948. Japan is rebuilding her cities after the calamity of World War II, her people putting defeat behind them and looking to the future. The celebrated painter Masuji Ono fills his days attending to his garden, his house repairs, his two grown daughters and his grandson, and his evenings drinking with old associates in quiet lantern-lit bars. His should be a tranquil retirement. But as his memories continually return to the past - to a life and a career deeply touched by the rise of Japanese militarism - a dark shadow begins to grow over his serenity.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "I really really enjoyed reading this book. It's an easy enough plot to follow but you have to pay attention and not let your guard down, since the narrator is unreliable. I'm drawn to his books because they push you to question what it means to remember, what it means to have "good intentions" and what if means to know one anther."; "Loved the book, Unreliable narrator that made me question everything that he told us in the book, he was stuck in the past and he's aware of that while watching his daughter's lives moved on toward a future that was his art work making propaganda against."; "One of my favourite elements of Ishiguro's style is how he uses the limited perception/unreliability of his narrators to allude to what is unsaid. A memory forgotten, or a secret not being shared. It is delightfully subtle, yet always there. In this case, the character of Ono, an elderly Japanese painter living in the post World War II era, recounts bits of his career and life before and after the war. Courteous conversation dominates the narrative, which perfectly obfuscates the themes of regret and shame. The understatement is what makes it powerful."