Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

Always enjoy the way how Ishiguro tells the stories. All these five stories are warm-hearted and filled with nostalgia.

I placed the order fully expecting to receive a standard edition of the book. However, to my utter surprise and delight, the package arrived today, and to my amazement, it contained a first edition, first print of the book! I must confess, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the edition details on the copyright page. As an avid reader and collector, stumbling upon such a rare gem feels like winning the lottery. The book arrived meticulously packaged, ensuring its pristine condition upon arrival. Holding this amazing edition in my hands invoked a sense of excitement and reverence for the author's work. Nocturnes isn’t a novel, but an anthology of five short stories. One could even argue they are more closely related than the typical short story collection. A character from the first story even reappears in the fourth story, in an expanded and slightly different role. Each story features a different type of protagonist who has a different relationship to music. Most of them are musicians. One of them is merely a music lover. In every case, their relationship with music is a key part of the story. The dust cover of the story collection states: “Five stories of music and nightfall”. However, I would add another theme to the list: love. In many ways the stories are about love in all of its forms. We see the loss of love, the kindling of love, the bonds and love of friendships lost and found, and really we see into the heart of love itself. Nocturnes retains some aspects of Ishiguro’s world which are familiar to us – the elegant, understated language used by his narrators, the sense of people speaking not just at cross purposes but in active denial of communication, characters paralysed by the past – but others which are new: contemporary settings; stories where the storyteller is not – necessarily – the central character; and even unaccustomed evidence of Ishiguro comedy. A theme of Nocturnes – as the ‘nightfall’ part of the subtitle suggests – is the regret which comes from failed (and unexplored) potential. It is fair to say that there are themes here common to much of Ishiguro's work; missed opportunities and unfulfilled potential, nostalgia, the strain of relationships and their evolution over time, the beauty in art (music) which is lost in the minutiae of life, and the often unexpected/unhappy effects of one's choices The writing is simple and easy to understand. Though this book didn’t make me really happy or sad, it has a calming effect on me. All of the stories in this book have some melancholy and soothing tone. The setting of these stories also affirms that. Some people might find it boring which is why I’m warning you about it here. So you’ll know what to expect. I believe to enjoy this book you have to be in a particular ‘mood’. If you just want to relax and not looking for a fast paced read, Nocturnes might be the perfect book for you.

Kazuo Ishiguro is back to his bittersweet, witty but sensitive original style. The five brief novellas of Nocturnes are intense and beautiful; they are packed with detail, never waste the readers' attention, and are entirely engrossing. In the first: Crooner, a Polish café musician comes to the assistance of a vynil-era singer who was once his mother's idol. Another story pits a greying ex-hippie against his brash and shallow university friends in a comedy of missed meanings. The third peels the multiple layers of an unexpected encounter in the Malvern hills. I hesitated to get Nocturnes. After the awkward plot of When We Were Orphans, the controversial The Unconsoled, the gothic / sci-fi Never Let Me Go, I thought: sure, this is interesting, but maybe this is an author running out of inspiration, maybe this is someone flailing for the next idea, and now all we're getting is a collection of stories. This is what I had in the back of my mind, especially when I saw the title, with the vaguely corny musical theme, the Chopin prop. But it isn't like that. This book is in the style of Ishiguro's first three novels, and it is new at the same time. The musical theme is an excuse; it even works. These are all moving stories with an eye for verisimilitude - the infuriating fragmented mobile-phone conversation, customer rage at the sandwich bar - and humour. Two of them got me laughing to tears - I know reviewers say that, but literally. And Ishiguro can have you laughing to tears and two pages later falling respectfully silent. Some people say they don't like short stories because it is difficult to build characters within their brief span. But this author can pack a character in fifty pages where others would take 300. And the stories aren't entirely unconnected... but I won't spoil it for you. Don't miss this!

どのストーリーもとても惹きつけられ、読後は心地よい余韻に浸っています。

A collection which will not disappoint fans of Kazuo Ishiguro.