Friday, February 6, 2009

Memories

When We Were Orphans is the novel I'd like to claim to be reading currently, but since the opportunities of actually getting to sit down and open it have been few and far between lately, especially over the last three days, I'm not sure it would be entirely honest to make that claim. Fortunately it's so mesmeric that it's easy to imagine getting back into it over the weekend once I can push the piles of marking to one side. Unfortunately it's so subtle in terms of the details of the plot that I'm wondering if I'll really pick up where I left off without missing some key features and feeling a bit thick in the process.

As I've pointed out in this Far Place on previous occasions, the joy of having a not particularly great memory is that you get to read stuff again and it can be quite fresh. But the down side is that you can feel like less than the Ideal Reader that the talents of Mr Ishiguro call for.

Of course, since the protagonist's problems in the novel themselves revolve around memory and its inherent deceitfulness there's something peculiarly appropriate in all of this.

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