Book Review: The Buried Giant

Book: The Buried Giant
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Publisher:Faber
Price: 799
Pages: 345

Strange is the world that best-selling British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro creates in this novel, his first in a decade. At the most obvious level, The Buried Giant inhabits a strange and mysterious landscape full of mist-covered fens and dark grottos with skeletons underfoot, and populated by malevolent ogres, demons, pixies, witches, knights, shamans and monks — a cross between Shrek and The Hobbit.

The world of medieval England that Ishiguro evokes, partly taken from history, and partly from myth and literary romances such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, will also seem strange today. Populated by the warring Briton and Saxon tribes, this is a primitive society, where Christianity is slowly marking its presence, but which is yet to give up on its earlier 'pagan' belief systems, where people live in proto communes, where doors as an architectural feature are just coming into fashion and even possessing a candle is a mark of privilege.

At one level, The Buried Giant is a novel about an elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice, who embark on a journey in search of their son's village and all the adventures they encounter on the way. They are joined by a brave warrior called Wistan, a boy named Edwin and Sir Gawain, the legendary figure of Arthurian fable, now become old, infirm and somewhat ridiculous.

Somewhere along, Axl and Beatrice's goal, too, changes from finding their son to slaying Querig, a she-demon who is responsible for spreading the 'mist', a strange affliction which takes away people's memories. But the journey, like all true journeys, must proceed inward as much as outward. Axl and Beatrice must battle their own demons, before they can hope to reach their destination.

At another level, the novel is allegorical; that is, its elaborate structure of myth and fantasy is a camouflage, designed to work through a conundrum — how important is it to preserve our memories, even when they may not be joyous ones but a cause for pain? For Wistan, a Saxon, his memory of the brutal massacre and pillage perpetrated by the Briton knights of King Arthur are a painful memory that fuels his desire for vengeance, and could set off another cycle of war and violence. Peace, as Sir Gawain posits, can only be premised on forgetting.

At the personal level, memory is the bedrock on which identity forms itself, and on which love and human relations are based. As Axl and Beatrice discover, their love for each other can only be sustained through their memories of the happy times they have lived through.

As the anguished Beatrice says: "But Axl, we can't even remember those days [when we were foolish young lovers]. Or any of the years between. We don't remember our fierce quarrels or the small moments we enjoyed and treasured. We don't remember our son or why he's away from us....I'm wondering if without our memories, there's nothing for it but for our love to fade and die."

But memory is a two edged sword, providing solace but also raking up painful memories of loss and betrayal, as Axl and Beatrice discover after the "mist" lifts once Wistan manages to kill Querig. Will their love prove strong enough to survive memory?