It's hard to describe this book without giving too much away. However, I liked the way the story was constructed, with Etsuko being visited in England (where she lives now) by her second daughter Niki and alternating with her memories of (part) of her life in Nagasaki.
SPOILER ALERT
As soon as I read that Etsuko had lived in Nagasaki, I wondered how this had effected her mentally. Then we find out that her first daughter, Keiko, who was born in Japan, committed suicide after the family moved to England, her first husband Jiro is no longer around (dead or divorced we never know)and her second husband Sheringham, who brought her to England, is dead. Her second daughter Niki (who is white and takes after her father) is partly estranged. So the complexities of Etsuko's history do not make her the most reliable of narrators.
The book actually concentrates on Etsuko's memories of a specific time when she was pregnant with Keiko and made friends with Sachiko and her young daughter Mariko. Part way into the book I was waiting to hear what happened during about the intervening years, but the author is not interested in giving us the slightest hint. It's not what the book is about.
It seemed to me to be about the struggles of memory, or more particularly a false memory that Etsuko has dreamed to make sense of the traumas she has experienced. We do learn about the formalities of family life in Japan through a visit by Jiro's father Ogato. Then there is always the clash of cultures in the background. In England Etsuko and Keiko are Oriental and Niki and her father are white. But Ishiguro never mentions any difficulties and we are left again to make up our own minds.
Then there are a couple of instances in the last ten pages that throw us a curved ball. Or do they actually let us know that we have been baffled the whole time. Whatever, reading the author's prose is always a treat.
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