When love is not enough to last a lifetime..
… because sometimes, it just runs out. After all, isn’t a lifetime just too long to expect anything to last?
… or because, you just forget what it felt like. There’s so much else to feel all the time.
… or because, even if you grow old together, you could grow in very different ways. Are we the same people that started out together?
… or because, sometimes loving yourself is a journey you just have to go on alone. With a little help from strangers
… or because, only so much love is available at a given time in your life. Is there more you were looking for?
Five stories for each of the five themes above.
The first story ‘Crooner’ tells the tale of famous yesteryear singer Tony Gardener and how he serenades his long time wife in Venice with the help of a local band player. The second, ‘Come Rain Come Shine’ is the story about a London couple married for years, who invite one of their long time best friends (who shares a passion for music with the wife), to stay with them, leading to unintended consequences. The third, ‘Malvern Hills’ is the story of an aspiring musician, who takes time off into the country side to live with his sister and her husband, and encounters a friendly-not-so-friendly mature couple. The fourth, ‘Nocturne’ tells the story of a night encounter of a jazz player and celebrity Lily Gardener (Tony Gardener’s ex-wife) who find themselves as neighbours in a cosmetic surgery recovery hotel. And the fifth story, ‘Cellist’ is about a gifted young cellist in Rome, who is discovered and mentored by a virtuoso during a summer, that changes his life forever.
Five short stories that tell tales in a way that captures you inside the moment, that is happening in front of you. As I read the book, from one story to the next, I felt like I am moving from one “snow-globe” world to another, simultaneously feeling trapped inside, watching the world outside, as well as being outside watching the still world, inside the glass. Each snow-globe, a frozen moment from an entire life of the protagonists.
It is as if the entire past that the characters have had, and the entire future that is yet to come has somehow got trapped in that one moment. The moment where each of the stories happen. A moment in time, yet a moment of eternity.
A moment that is not exciting or funny or romantic or scary or tragic or dramatic or adventurous or even philosophical. It’s the story of the moment that just is.
Stories that have neither happy nor sad endings. In fact, stories that have no endings at all. These are stories that don’t end. They just stop telling.
Stories linked by a connection to music in one form or another. Stories that have a third person to view a couple’s relationship from an outside, though not always disconnected, perspective. And where the third person always finds a way of connecting with the couple. Stories that play with nostalgia, memory and the fading away of romance and connections, like one of your old favourite faded jeans, that you never throw away, but don’t wear too often either.
Kazuo Ishiguro must be a master because the stories are sometimes so strangely uneventful that you wonder how it’s keeping you hooked. You are amazed at the boldness of the nothingness that forms the plot of each of the stories, and yet you can’t keep the book down. Perhaps, the extraordinariness of the book is in the ordinariness of the characters and their stories. And the author just laying it out there the way it is. The people, the characters, the moments, their feelings, all of it. Just laying it out there for all of us to get a glimpse of and move on.
There’s something about Kazuo Ishiguro and like my first experience of the Japanese single malt a few years ago, I am eager to experience more. 'Never Let Me Go' or 'Buried Giant', will be next.
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