On numerous occasions, I was VERY impressed by Kazuo Ishiguro's writing. Sometimes, he uses words so effectively that I imagine his scenes with great detail and their images stay in the background of my mind for days. And sometimes he creates characters that leap off the page, that seem real and complex and simply fascinating to me. In this book, one of the characters was like this for me - Sarah Hemmings.

Unfortunately, the lead character and narrator, Christopher, was not like this at all. In the beginning, he was interesting enough. But three quarters of the way through the book, he loses his mind.

Is that a fair statement? Perhaps he doesn't lose his mind, but his mind clearly takes a turn for the worse. He goes off on a cockeyed quest, seeking his parents who disappeared when he was just a child. Now, this quest might have been interesting to me, if I could understand it - if it made sense for the character as I had understood him. But it didn't. And further, the writing, at this point in the book, was no longer as gripping. It ceased to take my breath away, and it even ceased to interest me, at times.

The story and characters simply fall apart. Maybe they're supposed to, but nonetheless, I didn't find this so appealing.

Why did I give this book three stars? Because it's still worth reading. Because Kazuo Ishiguro is generally a very good writer. And because this book is going to stay with me, and make me think, even if it fell apart near the end.

Another disappointment from Kazuo Ishiguro, and the fact that it was nominated for the Booker Prize shows how imbecilic literary fiction prizes are these days.

There were many annoying things within this novel, and chief among which is the protagonist Christopher is a passive idiot. Of course, Stevens from Remains of the Day was a passive idiot too, but Stevens was SUPPOSED be an idiot whereas Christopher is supposed to be a celebrated detective. This guy can't solve some kid stealing lunch money much less the most celebrated cases in early 20th-century England! I started getting mad--I always do when I read crap novels--when Christopher is searching for the house his parents supposedly were jailed in. Why he assumes his parents are there is beyond me--it's explained, but it's a VERY weak explanation--and why he would assume they would still be there despite a passage of 20-odd years and the fact that it's in the middle of a war zone is jaw-droppingly idiotic. Along the way, in the middle of the war while searching for his parents, Christopher just happens to be come across his great childhood friend Akira. Think about this for a second. Shanghai has, what, 10 million people, and Christopher, after yearning to see his childhood friend for so long, just happens to come across this guy on the street. Give me the break!!! Contrivance works sometimes--notice the reemergence of the protagonist's childhood enemy in The Kite Runner--but you'd better have a decent plot to hide such contrivance. This novel, sadly, doesn't have a decent plot. In fact, I'm not even sure what the hell Christopher was doing in Shanghai as a detective. What crime was he trying to solve? It's explained very anemically, and the only investigation he does is finding some drunk cop from the old days. He does no interviews, collects no evidence, nothing. And Ishiguro describes him as if he were Holmes or something!

Bottom line: a weak effort on Ishiguro's part. He seems to be repeating himself. Jennifer, Christopher's adopted daughter, has suicidal tendencies much like the Japanese woman's daughter in A Pale View of the Hills. Never mind that Jennifer, from her childhood, seems a very vivacious girl with a happy disposition. No, Ishiguro had to make it sad, and what's sadder than a young woman who wants to kill herself?

Worst, all his recent male characters seem to be variations of Stevens, the repressed, passive butler in Remains of the Day. Stevens worked because the story NEEDED a Stevens. This story needed a lot more dynamic a protagonist.

And the prose is the perfectly understated, narcoleptic prose of his other novels--even though this is ostensibly a detective story set in a major war. Imagine Lars von Trier directing Terminator, and you'd see why such prose is so totally out of place in writing such a story.

Bottom line: Ishiguro is starting to look like a guy with a one-trick pony--and he's seriously flogging it for all it's worth.

This was the first book of Ishiguro's that I've read and unfortunately it was disappointing.

The story begins with the premise of Christopher's remembered early life in Shanghai. Eventually we learn the story of his parents' disappearance as it is interwoven with his life as a London-based detective. Christopher's character starts out with promise-the flashbacks to his childhood are interesting and evocative. Unfortunately, the character becomes increasingly less dimensional and I, as one reader, began to care less about him.

The story itself starts to fall apart mid-way through when Christopher adopts an orphan girl. Other than her being another "orphan," I'm not sure of the character's purpose in the story. Her contribution consists of a few remembered words and a vague obligation in Christopher's mind. (She is not even a full sketch of a character). Then, things really start to fall apart when Christopher finally goes back to Shanghai to solve his parents' case. It's apparent that this vague disjointedness is allegory here to Christopher's mental state, but it would have worked better and been more interesting with more detail and clarity. Christopher's character becomes a shadow of itself, likely intentional by the author, but as a reader this is just water and vagueness. [Slight SPOILER following.] In Shanghai, one of the least successful aspects of the story is Christopher's sudden decision to run away with Sarah, a chilly socialite he met in London. When he runs out for a minute to chase down a clue, and misses the departure with her, it's such an obvious plot tool that you can see it coming pages before. Not to mention, there never seems to be any real basis for his decision to run off with her in the first place. By the time the reader learns the truth about his parents' apparent kidnapping, all the energy has run out of the book.

The historical perspective of Shanghai is interesting; something I would like to know more about in this story. I think that the author should have illustrated the international settlement more fully, for both clarity and depth. Unfortunately, I can't recommend this book -- in the end it was too muddled and unsatisfying. I also think that the editorial review is somewhat misleading and tries to make up for the confusion of the book itself.

It's not just a case of Christopher Banks being an unreliable narrator. Kazuo Ishiguro is an unreliable author, and I mean that as a compliment.

Think of the book as a musical ... no one walks out of "Rent" complaining that the narrator was unreliable as people don't break into song. It's a convention.

Ishiguro has created a world in which detectives really are celebrated, where police and governments are eager to work them, and where there are enough celebrated detectives that it is possible to bump into a few at a party (the best sort of party, of course). This isn't Bank's unreliable narration: it's the given milieu of this fascinating novel.

I suspect readers are flummoxed coming to this after "Remains of the Day," rather than coming to this after the even more absurd and dream-like "The Unconsoled." Characters in this book are absolutely not going to behave the way people would in our world, and I, for one, are delighted ... there are thousands of books making the attempt to recreate reality (more or less effectively), so it's a treat to read an incredibly beautifully-written book that has no intention of trying.

It's a fantasy, set in a world that only ever existed in books. Enjoy it for what it is.

I entered into this book with very high expectations for obvious reasons: Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go are examples of outstanding fiction. When We Were Orphans is not. It starts in a very compelling and beautiful manner with the intertwining of Banks' current and childhood life, but things start to really unravel when he returns to his childhood Shanghai to solve his parents disappearance (hence title). There are so many ludicrous gaps in common sense in the back third of the book, it becomes a supremely frustrating read. For example, an English Civil Servant plans for a huge welcoming party for his parents (lost 20 years previously!)... Banks still believes them to be alive! He meets his childhood friend in a war zone! Soldiers put their lives on the line to help him search in enemy territory for these parents he lost 20 years previously! He examines the stump of an arm (torn off by a shell blast) with a magnifying glass (what was he expecting to find? a clue about who fired the shell?)! Orphans pop up with annoying regularity! His uncle turns out to be the bad guy! It eventually descends into complete rubbish and I had to force myself to finish it.

My advice: avoid this poorly constructed mess and read his classics.