The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

Surely everyone has experienced the anxiety dream during a time of stress--the one where you suddenly realize you've forgotten to do something important and you start trying to do it and circumstances and people keep holding you back. Here's how the anxiety dream goes that I have often had, especially while in college: I suddenly remember that I have not been attending a class for weeks, but the final exam is that day and I can still pass the class if I pass the exam. So I begin trying to study, but people keep bothering me and weird things keep happening and I don't get much done. Too much time slips by and I realize I have only a few minutes to get to the test. But then I cannot find the right classroom. I search and search, opening door after door, getting more anxious all the time about humiliating myself and disappointing everyone I know. That's about the time I usually wake up.

This book is exactly like that. Really. It's a 535-page-long anxiety dream. And I could not finish it. I read 207 pages, but I just could not bear to finish it. It made me too anxious.

This is apparently the dream of a renowned pianist who has come to give a concert in an unnamed city. Immediately he is confronted with the fact that he has a full four-day schedule of events, which has apparently been sent to him. He only dimly remembers the schedule and cannot locate it, but embarrassment forces him to conceal that fact for the moment. He does gather from conversations at his hotel that his schedule will include a speech that is important to the town. He has no clue what that's about. Various people keep asking him for special favors. And so it goes.

Here's the last bit I read before deciding to give it up: The pianist learns he is scheduled for an important meeting, but he decides to take the young boy who may or may not be his son back to their old apartment to look for a lost toy. On the way he meets a reporter and photographer who want to interview him. He leaves his ?son? in a soda shop to go with the reporter, who persuades him to take a bus to a specific building. On the bus, the pianist encounters a childhood friend who says that he had promised to come to her house the night before to meet her friends. He says he will come after he has finished with the reporter. After being let off the bus, he and the reporter and photographer hike up a steep hill for a considerable time. There the pianist is confronted with another musician who begs him to come to a luncheon. He takes a long car ride to a small cafe and witnesses the other musician being humiliated and denounced. Suddenly he remembers his son, and finds that the cafe and the soda shop are actually parts of the same building.

Can you see why I stopped reading? I turned to about page 400, and could see that the dream was still in progress. I turned to the next-to-last page, and could see that the dream was still in progress. Enough already.

Ishiguro does a phenomenal job here--this is exactly like a dream. It is possible for the reader to discern many things about the psyche of the pianist from the elements, much as our own dreams can be revealing. Various characters in the dream seem to be representative of the pianist at various stages of his life. But it is precisely because Ishiguro accomplishes his goal so masterfully that I cannot finish the book. The anxiety of the dream transfers to me and makes me unbearably uncomfortable.

To whom would I recommend this book? To those who can read on a strictly intellectual level, without becoming immersed. It is well done, but it was extremely disturbing to me.