I love Ishiguro and just finished his first novel, which was more of a horror story than I had anticipated! There’s a lot of ambiguity in the ending in regards to Etsuko as the narrator, and to what extent she has projected herself/conflated herself and her daughter Keiko with the characters of Sachiko and Mariko. However, the part which confused me the most was a passage towards the end right before she encounters Sachiko’s cousin in the cottage with Mariko. It begins in a way that suggests it’s particularly relevant to the book’s interrogation of memory and unreliable narration:
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>”Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers, and no doubt this applies to certain of the recollections I have gathered here.”
She then goes on to make reference to a “premonition” that she experiences, which horrifies her:
>”…I find it tempting to persuade myself it was a premonition I experienced that afternoon, that the unpleasant image which entered my thoughts that day was something altogether different — something much more intense and vivid — than the numerous day-dreams which drift through one’s imagination during such long and empty hours.”
And, while watching a car navigate outside:
>”It must have been just then that it happened, just as I was gazing towards the cottage in a somewhat confused state of mind. With no apparent provocation, that chilling image intruded into my thoughts, and I came away from the window with a troubled feeling. I returned to my housework, trying to put the picture out of my mind, but it was some minutes before I felt sufficiently rid of it to give consideration to the reappearance of the large white car….”
During this sequence, she makes reference to the stories of child murders that were circulating in Japan during this time, specifically a young girl left hanging from a tree. It’s probable this is the vision that “intrudes” on her, though I don’t understand why it is THEN specifically that she experiences it, or that Ishiguro chooses to insert it into the narrative. It’s a “premonition” of Keiko hanging herself in England…but it’s also disturbingly evocative on several levels
1.) It brings to mind the woman that Mariko keeps “seeing”, who Sachiko confides to Etsuko was a woman who drowned her baby in front of them (this also echoed by the drowned kittens). Both of these instances suggest an enormous sacrifice involved in leaving the past behind in an effort to move on from an old, decimated life (a theme echoed throughout the novel and deeply intertwined with the aftermath of the bombings).
2.) For me, it adds unease to the two separate and far apart scenes where Etsuko approaches Mariko with a rope caught around her ankle. In the second scene, Mariko seems to experience real fear at the sight of the rope and runs from Etsuko:
>“I told you, it’s nothing. It just caught on to my foot.” I took a step closer. Why are you
doing that, Mariko?”
“Doing what?”
“You were making a strange face just now.”
“1 wasn’t making a strange face. Why have you got the rope?”
“You were making a strange face. It was a very strange face.’
“Why have you got the rope?”
I watched her for a moment. Signs of fear were appearing on her face.”
Does this suggest that Etsuko tried to kill her daughter, or that Sachiko tried to kill Mariko? Is it just the specter of death that hangs over the book, foreshadowing Keiko’s fate? What do you think?
by Saraluna