Nocturnes
Five Stories of Music and Nightfall
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4.1 • 7 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day comes an inspired sequence of stories as affecting as it is beautiful.
“A fine and moving collection . . . displaying [Ishiguro's] unique combination of the sad, the stoic and the consoling.” —The Guardian
In this sublime story cycle, Kazuo Ishiguro explores love, music and the passage of time. This quintet ranges from Italian piazzas to the Malvern Hills, a London flat to the “hush-hush floor” of an exclusive Hollywood hotel. Along the way we meet young dreamers, café musicians and faded stars, all at some moment of reckoning.
Gentle, intimate and witty, Nocturnes is underscored by a haunting theme: the struggle to restoke life’s romance, even as relationships flounder and youthful hopes recede.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This suite of five stories hits all of Ishiguro's signature notes, but the shorter form mutes their impact. In "Crooner," Tony Gardner, a washed-up American singer, goes sloshing through the canals of Venice to serenade his trophy wife, Lindy. The narrator, Jan, is a hired guitar player whose mother was a huge fan of Tony, but Jan's experience playing for Tony fractures his romantic ideals. Lindy returns in the title story, which finds her in a luxury hotel reserved for celebrity patients recovering from cosmetic surgery. The narrator this time is Steve, a saxophonist who could never get a break because of his "loser ugly" looks. Lindy idly strikes up a friendship with Steve as they wait for their bandages to come off and their new lives to begin. In the final story, "Cellists," an unnamed saxophonist narrator who, like Jan, plays in Venice's San Marco square, observes the evolving relationship of a Hungarian cello prodigy after he meets an American woman. The stories are superbly crafted, though they lack the gravity of Ishiguro's longer works (Never Let Me Go; Remains of the Day), which may leave readers anticipating a crescendo that never hits.
Customer Reviews
I loved every word of this short story collection!!
This collection of short stories was well written and I loved the description of each character and how they played a role in the story that was told, either from a first, second, or third person point of view!! The stories were funny and inspiring. Truly worth five stars!!