- Paperback: 544 pages
- Publisher: Vintage Books; Reprint edition (Jan 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0679735879
- ISBN-13: 978-0679735878
- Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 13 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,598,485 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Unconsoled
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Product Description
Book Description
A haunting and utterly original novel in which a famous pianist confronts unresolved emotional aspects of his life.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
The Unconsoled is at once a gripping psychological mystery, a wicked satire of the cult of art, and a poignant character study of a man whose public life has accelerated beyond his control. The setting is a nameless Central European city where Ryder, a renowned pianist, has come to give the most important performance of his life. Instead, he finds himself diverted on a series of cryptic and infuriating errands that nevertheless provide him with vital clues to his own past. In The Unconsoled Ishiguro creates a work that is itself a virtuoso performance, strange, haunting, and resonant with humanity and wit.
"A work of great interest and originality.... Ishiguro has mapped out an aesthetic territory that is all his own...frankly fantastic [and] fiercer and funnier than before."--The New Yorker
"A work of great interest and originality.... Ishiguro has mapped out an aesthetic territory that is all his own...frankly fantastic [and] fiercer and funnier than before."--The New Yorker
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
57 of 59 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Number 9...number 9...number 9...A surreal labyrinth of a novel, car journeys that take hours and then you return to where you began simply by walking through a door...strangers who you suddenly realise you have known for years...and no sleep, never the chance to sleep...This book will haunt your dreams and make you wander about with a vacant expression muttering under your breath and cause you distress and unease but if you're anything like me you won't be able to leave it alone and when you've finished you'll want to read it again. Like all of Ishiguro's work it contains incomparable insights into the complexities and sadness of human nature. The characters ramble on and on explaining in a pedantic way every fine detail of the subjects that prey on their minds day and night but it is endlessly fascinating and Ishiguro is such a kind writer, you feel nothing but tenderness towards this large cast of lonely and obsessed people.
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
An epic, stumbling, vague, directionless ramble of an novel which illustrates better than ever Ishiguro's mastery of the frailty of human character. Confusing and disturbing it undeniably is; but ultimately it is very, very rewarding. Genius.
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This brilliant masterpiece is an utterly unique novel - unlike anything I have read among books written in the past fifty years. The story - of a concert pianist arriving in Central Europe only to find himself constantly walking into various unresolved emotional aspects of his life - brings us into contact with great seriousness and sadness, wonderful farce and is unremittingly strange and bizarre. Ishiguro writes brilliantly, and conveys the alienation and dissociation from the world brilliantly in his prose and his unique dialogue.
Oh, and the scene with the broom cupboard is one of the funnisest things I've read in years.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Luxurious characters
Ishiguro creates deep characters, using pages and pages to explore their lives as the story unwinds. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Ben Reid
The Portrait of the Artist as a an Unconsoled
I read The Unconsoled first when it came out and was appalled at first. Everything seemed to be distorted - time, space, personalities.
It took a while to make sense. Read more
It took a while to make sense. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Matthias Weber
A dreamscape that haunts me still
What a brave, strange choice as a follow-up to Remains of the Day!
It's so hard to describe this book in terms that are both accurate and which would make someone want... Read more
It's so hard to describe this book in terms that are both accurate and which would make someone want... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Stephen Hudson
Simply ...
...wonderful book. Not a word too many or unnecessary for my liking. untraditionally that it's written , I found it very easy to tune into it and could only wish that author's... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Christina Saunders
Genuinely haunting and thoroughly original
I find it quite difficult to understand a great deal of the negative reviews this book has undeservedly earned. Read more
Published 11 months ago by TheOddGothic
A stark postmodern vision, but ultimately disappointing and...
Eagerly anticipated after the six year gap since his previous novel 'The Remains of the Day', Kazuo Ishiguro's 'The Unconsoled' was understandably met with a lukewarm and confused... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Mr. D Burin
The Unreadable
This has got to be the most infuriating, perplexing and just plain annoying book to read since Thomas Mann's 'The Magic Mountain'. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Thomas N. Orchard
Bizarrely compelling
To begin with I found this book extremely frustrating, I just wanted to shout at the central character, Ryder: why do you let people push you around like that? Read more
Published 16 months ago by Janet
Unputdownable
I was totally unprepared for this work. I picked it up simply because I had enjoyed quite a few of Ishiguro's other works. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Scott F. Hannigan
don't give up.
I love the works of Kazuo Ishiguro,but I must admit that I found this book hard to get a grip on first time round. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Mrs Cambridge
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