Kazuo Ishiguro – Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall
I finally finished reading it. I can’t say I didn’t like the stories, but it did take me a while to read. It was an easy read though, the combination of music, shattered dreams and reality is nice but honestly not quite what I was expecting.
Five stories, nightfall, music and dreams.
The first story, “Crooner”, takes us to Venice, where Janeck, a musician coming from a communist Poland is playing his guitar for tourists. One morning, while playing inside one of the tents in a piazza he meets Tony Gardner, who’s music he grew up listening to. After talking for a while, Jan gets the unique chance to serenade with Tony for his wife, Lindy. The romantic serenade turns out to be just a last gesture of love before their divorce.
In “Come Rain Come Shine”, Ray a 47 year old single man wakes up being stuck in helping the marriage of his two university friends. They drifted apart after college, when music was all that mattered, and now after so many years, their lives aren’t as they expected. The story culminates with Ray impersonating a dog while trying to cover up a mistake.
“Malvern Hills” is a story about a young man’s struggle to follow his dream. He decides to quit school to be able to focus only on music, but after a series of failures he retreats at his sister’s place for the summer. While trying to work on his music and helping his sister with the coffee shop, he meets an old couple from Switzerland. They are both musicians, playing for tourists in different countries and they seem to have a beautiful life, but by the end of the vacation, their relationship seems to be fading away.
In “Nocturne” we are meeting with Tony Gardner’s ex wife, Lindy, again. She is recovering after a plastic surgery in a hotel, where her neighbor is a talented but unsuccessful jazz saxophonist, who was encouraged by his manager to get a plastic surgery hoping that it will boost his career. They meet and start a strange intimacy, walking around the hotel at night, talking of fame, talent and beauty.
In the last story, “Cellists”, a woman pretending to be a great cellist starts tutoring a young promising Hungarian. She cannot play the cello, but thinks she has a unique talent that shouldn’t be altered by trying to explore it. She ends up marrying a man she doesn’t love and the young cellist takes a job playing in a hotel restaurant in Amsterdam.
