The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

I know this book has popped up a few times over the years, but it has been a very long time since a book has struck me quite like The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, which i finished recently.

I don't feel like I understand it, I'm frankly not even sure that I like it. But it is so unique, creative and intriguing that I can't stop thinking about it.

To prevent myself from driving my other half mad as I rant at them, I wanted to lay down some of my interpretation here.

I think this book is about regret, through the eyes of somebody with dementia. I, like many, have direct experience of loved ones with dementia and as I read this book I felt a kind of dawning horror that this is what it must feel like to suffer with it.

Ryder struggles with his memory. He forgets to go to events he agreed to and turns up at events he forgot about. He meets people who feel like strangers but who he is simultaneously certain he knows. He watches (or remembers?) 2001: A Space Odyssey but the cast and plot is all wrong.

He struggles with a coherent sense of time passing. On a couple of occasions he sleeps for what he feels is barely any time but other characters react as if he has slept until a very late hour. It is extremely uncertain when this novel is even set. 2001: A Space Odyssey is on at the cinema, which initially released in the 60s but is a classic so could really have been shown at any time after that. He seems to think his parents are alive, while they are described by other characters as being very elderly when they were around 20+ years ago. Scenes in the present day are often blended with scenery from his childhood.

I think there are also hints that Ryder is in a care home. Almost every building somehow connects to the 'hotel' as if he is never leaving it. He doesn't remember where the hotel is or at first why he is even there.

To my recollection he never eats anything solid. The academics eat mashed potato, Ryder drinks lots of coffee after which he feels slightly less stressed. Many of the people around him ignore what he is saying and monologue at him, except when they seek to calm him down with many of the physical acts we associate with comforting old people, such as the man on the tram at the end gently patting his leg and telling hik to eat.

I agree with a theory a few people seem to have: that Ryder is also Boris, Stephan and Brodsky. They are the same man at different stages at his life and his sense of time and memory is eroded so far that they elide. This explains why he can recall conversations they had that he couldn't possibly have witnessed himself in the confines of the plot.

Boris and Ryder both like football and seem to have absent, unsupportive parent(s). Stephan and Brodsky both play the piano, as does Ryder. The former again has unsupportive parents, who won't watch him perform (just like Ryder) and commits to lots of international travel at the end of the novel (again, like Ryder).

Ryder, as Brodsky, also starts showing memory issues. I noticed he had a peculiar way of speaking at times where he used incredibly general terms for things he presumably couldnt remember in detail: his 'wound' (he has had a leg amputated), an 'animal' (not a dog, or even a pet) etc.

I think through this lens, Ryder is in a care home ruminating over things he regrets. Whether that is a lost toy as a child, being forced to be overly mature by his overbearing parents (reading household manuals, acting like the adult as Gustav dies), or mourning a woman he loved but who didn't love him back. Throughout it all are his parents, who I think within the story are Hoffman and his wife, who he misses and loves and resents all at the same time.

The ending is highly ambiguous, but vaguely positive. Is he reflecting on his life and concluding it wasnt that bad after all? Is he falling back into delusion? Is he medicated by the people on the tram, who may well be nurses?

Anyway, a fascinating book and I'd love to hear if anybody else thought so too. Also fascinated to hear if anybody interpreted anything differently to me, which I'm sure they did!