About an hour ago, II finished Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel, "A Pale View of Hills." And boy what a book. As slim and as brief--like a kind of daydream--as it was, I wanted it to keep going. But I didn't want it to clarify itself; in fact, I would have wanted it to deepen its mystery and to continue to present to me bridges that were not completed, asking me to cross the gap with my own knowledge and ideas.
Spoilers are ahead, so be warned.
The story concerns an older woman named Etsuko whose daughter, Niki, is visiting her in London. During this visit Etsuko remembers a friend from her younger days, a mother named Sachiko and her daughter, Mariko, both of whom live in Nagasaki and survived the bomb. Everyone in the novel is troubled, and everyone goes through their own hardships, many of which are left unsaid. What happened to Etsuko's first husband? Why did she leave Japan? Why does Niki always call her "courageous" for doing what she did?
Ishiguro never tells us. Again, like the unfinished bridge, he gives us just enough information to cross, but leaves enough gaps to ask us: "Brave the gap and make it yourself."
What I think happened: I'm a dark person, so I think that after Etsuko saw Sachiko drown the kittens, and Mariko became withdrawn and depressed, she murdered Sachiko or at least stole Mariko away and left for America. She gave birth to Niki (with her second husband, who is never described or met in the novel) and lived in London where, eventually, Mariko's childhood caught up with her and she killed herself. The novel never specifies any time frame, only that the characters all survived through the dropping of the atom bomb in Nagasaki.
Another interesting theory I read was that Etsuko is Sachiko, and that her memories are changed: she is creating other people to somehow soften the blow of realizing that she was a terrible mother to her first daughter. Etsuko does sound like Sachiko, and Mariko does sound like Keiko. And in the end, Etsuko/Sachiko leaves her first husband, Jiro (who is domineering and borderline abusive) for an American named Frank who left her in England; this would explain her "bravery"--escaping Japan.
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