By Kazuo Ishiguoro
I got this book in an Oxfam in September, 2023. I read half of it that day in an ice-cream shop, and I finished the rest over two commutes to work the next week. It’s set in Dark Ages England, post-Romans, during the conflict between the indigenous Britons and the invading Saxons, but it’s got a fantastical bent: the knights of Arthur are still at the edges of memory; and thar be monsters. It’s about an old married couple, Axl and Beatrice, leaving their village to see their son, whom they haven’t heard of in years and years. Along the way, they seem get caught up in the mystery of the land: why no-one can remember anything, why all is confusion, and history is lost.
It’s a haunting book - it has an image of the Dark Ages in England which I’ve never encountered before, suffused with wilderness and cold, and with a soft touch of confusion blurring all that is not here and now. Really, it’s about tragedy; it is revealed that Arthur himself has ordered the land to be covered in a fog of forgetfulness, from the dragon Querig, to stop people remembering the wars and battles between the Britons and Saxons, so they can live in peace. Once Querig is dead, it will all come rushing back.
Axl and Beatrice’s son is dead, and they had mourned him.
Deeply disconsolate and disconcerting. I loved it.