A Pale View of Hills

About

Etsuko, a Japanese woman living alone in England, dwells on the recent suicide of her daughter. Her memories drift to postwar Nagasaki — devastated streets, a friendship with a woman whose desperation she couldn't quite see, a child she may or may not have failed to protect. Past and present blur until the reader can no longer trust which story Etsuko is actually telling. Ishiguro's debut novel introduced the technique that would define his career: a narrator whose evasions are more revealing than any confession. The prose is so controlled, so careful, that every hesitation becomes a confession by omission. A Pale View of Hills is a ghost story without ghosts — unless the ghost is the version of yourself you can't bear to remember.

Awards

• ★Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize(1982 - Winner)