Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall [Paperback]

The five stories in this collection move rapidly. Unlike many short story collections where the reader feels like he can pick and choose stories in no particular order, the stories in Nocturnes feel like they should be read in quick succession in one go. Given their pacing, this seems like a manageable task over a long languorous weekend afternoon. They are written in an easy style and it's rewarding to notice that they contain characters which make multiple appearances.

There are several recurring themes throughout these stories. There are long term relationships that have been strained to breaking point like a tourist couple in the story "Malvern Hills"; people uneasy with fame and success like a man who undergoes plastic surgery in "Nocturn"; and an anxiety about fulfilling one's potential like a houseguest with severely judgmental friends in "Come Rain or Come Shine". The niggling details of life are shown to continuously squander the beauty which music offers. Careers get in the way of musicians trying to realize their artistic vision. Music brings individuals together, but the promises it makes can never be realized because of the circumstances those people find themselves in.

There are moments when these stories tread the line between realism and a hallucinatory dream-like narrative resonant of Ishiguro's masterful experimental novel The Unconsoled (whose protagonist is also a musician). Perhaps this is what Ishiguro is seeking to do: create the kind of inarticulate sensations which music invokes by using a carefully-modulated form of prose. He most definitely succeeds at demonstrating great skill in creating stories which are touchingly beautiful like the opening story "Crooner" and ones which are utterly hilarious and disturbing like "Nocturn". While perhaps not reaching the depth of his more meditative novels due to their intentionally clipped lengths, these stories are nevertheless highly accomplished and very enjoyable.

Kazuo Ishiguro is a proper writer: a book every four or five years, and, when they come along, they matter. His seven books, spanning thirty years, are the milestones of a lifelong meditation on longing, nostalgia, regret, and how on earth to cope with it all.

Reading Nocturnes, described on the jacket as a short-story "cycle", is like reading five Ishiguro novels in miniature. He's still the quintessence of himself, but here that essence is condensed and compressed into small, 30-page doses.

Like the nocturnes of Chopin, Fauré et al. from which the title derives, these are mood pieces, Romantic and pensive, evoking thoughts of finality and transience, of the passing of the day. Troubled relationships, usually marriages, lie in the background throughout.

The "nocturnes" are surprisingly uneventful, with a tendency to end on quiet, anticlimactic notes. In all five pieces, the characters come first. Fiction is all too often about authors moving their characters around like chess pieces; but Ishiguro's world is populated by free agents who flitter briefly across the page, fail to behave in a particularly novelistic way, then disappear back into the gloom of their real, monotonous lives. This wonderful, non-chessy writing is the secret to Ishiguro's success, and it's much in evidence here.

But there's a niggling feeling that Ishiguro is capable of more than this. There's enough overlap between the stories to make me wonder why he didn't stitch them together. I don't know whether to be impressed that Ishiguro didn't feel the need to merge the stories into a novel, or disappointed that he didn't bother.

Expect a work as distinctive and unforgettable as The Remains of the Day (1990) or Never Let Me Go (2005) and Nocturnes will fall short. But it's not some miscellaneous collection of unpublished scraps. Nocturnes is a finely crafted whole; cultured, elegant and captivating.

It's always difficult to review a Kazuo Ishiguro book. The naturalistic, fluid nature of his writing is very compelling and consistently worthy of at least four stars. The problem is with some of the characterisation in his novels and the desultory nature of his narratives. He's well known for the kind of stories that meander towards an anti-climax, the emphasis not so much on the destination as the journey. What do we learn about the characters from this snapshot of their life that has been revealed through the tale? Now this sort of passing-through approach should be ideal for the short story format, surely? Well yes and no. 'Nocturnes' has five stories for which the phrase 'hit-and-miss' is most apt. For every decent tale the next falls flat. The worst offenders in this collection are 'Come Rain or Come Shine' and the eponymous 'Nocturnes' for no other reason that they feel the most contrived and left me the most dissatisfied with their resolution. 'Cellists' comes a close third.

There is a running theme throughout the book of implacably shallow women who only value the men in their lives according to their social status and achievements. Another Ishiguro favourite is the docile male character who allows those around him to trampel his self-worth into the ground. These combined factors make for extremely irritating reading and reaches a nadir in doormat Ray and his supercilious, bullying friends Charlie and Emily in 'Come Rain...'-a story that actually starts off very promisingly.

'Nocturnes' is the tale of a talented but supposedly underachieving saxophonist, Steve, who is convinced by his callous ex-wife and opportunistic manager to have plastic surgery to improve his looks and -by their logic-his chances of success. Whilst re-cuperating after surgery in a plush hotel, he meets media-whore Lindy Gardner who he initially abhors due to her being a celebrity-chasing non-entity. And she is indeed obnoxious, resenting his talent and feeling it's her God-given right to set herself apart from being 'just public'. Steve comes close to putting her in her place only to be apologetic about it later-which just about sums up the propensity for spinelessness of the majority of male protagonists in 'Nocturnes'. And Steve is one of the more forthright ones, believe it or not.

In 'Cellists' a gifted young Hungarian Tibor, drifting through Italy, meets an American woman with delusions of grandeur. She claims to be a virtuoso cellist, offering to mentor him, despite not being proficient on the instrument herself. He still manages to fall under a spell... By now you get the drift.

The problem with this approach is that Ishiguro's characters throughout 'Nocturnes' end up being quite two-dimensional. In adhering to his non-explosive literary style, the author often forsakes realism. There are too many times when a confrontation would seem the natural outcome. When it doesn't occur, ironically, it betrays the realism that one assumes Ishiguro is after.

Having read quite a few of his books now I am also puzzled about some of Ishiguro's binary representations of women. Most of them are especially manipulative and unpleasant in 'Nocturnes'. I also feel the author sits on the fence too much with some of the subjects broached in the book. Is he critiquing the superficial nature of celebrity culture and aspirational living or is it merely a backdrop for another aimless tale? The thing is, Ishiguro is perfectly capable of making a point as demonstrated in 'Never Let Me Go'- my first exposure to his work and by far his best. 'Never...' raises some profound questions about medical ethics without being heavy-handed. Such reflection is missing in 'Nocturnes'.

That said as a music lover myself I appreciate that Ishiguro is a man enamoured with the art form; one with diverse taste and an excellent grasp of musical technicalities and the history of various genres. This definitely comes across throughout the collection and alongside the irresistably simple-but in no way facile-way he crafts a story, elevates the book in a way few others could manage. Knowing that there's always an infuriatingly repressed tone to Ishiguro's work, perhaps I'm a glutton for punishment to keep returning...or it's just plain addictive.