Acrimony and hurt can come from the way we remember differently, or do not remember at all. This devoted pair allows the theme of collective forgetfulness to mingle with moments that evoke the frustrations of dementia: although Axl and Beatrice seem to be able to break through the mist more than younger generations of adults, their flashes of insight do not always coincide, and sometimes contradict each others’ memories, or, worse, the idea the other wants to have of their past. The plot centres on an elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice, who realise gradually that they once had a son, and they decide to travel to where they suppose him to be.

Still, it’s a time of peace for the people of this land, where their only fear comes from the ogres, pixies and superstitions the country is steeped in.

So families have been divided by this forgetting, and communities risk forgetting members who go missing. Most appropriately of all, a mist of forgetfulness lies on the land: people do not remember what life was like before, or what led them to the lives they live now, or how to live in the splendour the Romans lived in. The way people have thought of this period for so long makes it perfectly apt for a story about why we choose to remember and to forget: in post-Roman Britain, didn’t everyone fall into the ‘dark ages’ overnight? Choosing to live in mud huts rather than lovely villas, forgetting civilisation and culture and Christianity in favour of ignorant savagery? Well no, but it’s what some still think, so Ishiguro playfully sprinkles elements of the exaggerated and fantastic into this stereotype, where the Britons live in burrows in the earth’s rock, an aged Sir Gawain roams the land in full armour, tall and gaunt like Sir Nicketty Nox, bringing to mind the persistent medieval idea that the ancestors were greater and far taller. This is the only Ishiguro I’ve read, and I’d been meaning to get to it since it came out, primarily because of the appeal of the setting: a dreamy, fantastic, folkloric version of post-Roman Britain, where fictions, anachronisms and ogres roam the land.

The mock-historical setting is perfect for a tale of trauma, forgetting, love, loss and anger. This was gorgeous, a confection of fantasy and historical fiction with a sly undercurrent of postmodern self-awareness. I struggled to find out any more about the sculpture, I’d love to know more if you have any info.

Kazuo ishiguro the buried giant review