QUEST, PT. 1
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| N.C. Wyeth. Title Page Illustration, The Boy's King Arthur. 1917 |
I was working in a bookstore when the Japanese-born British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant first came out. I remember snatching up the advanced reader copy and reading with enthusiasm. Having only read his earlier genre-fiction foray, Never Let Me Go, in my sci-fi book club, I really dug the Arthurian fantasy version of Ishiguro’s grand theme trifecta: the elusive nature of truth, the universal experience of loss, and the oppressive power of the past.
I’m reading it again this summer. Here's my report.
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PART I:
Ishiguro has spoken before about being inspired by a mysterious period in British history between the Roman occupation and the Saxon takeover from the indigenous Britons. This is one of those black boxes in time where historians have some ideas about what came before and what came after but know little about the events that bridged the gap.
Ishiguro's novel inhabits this chunk of prehistory, but his story is far from historical. He permits his world ogres, dragons, and pixies, all of them living together with Britons and Saxons in the shadow of a late King Arthur's glorious reign.
Our heroes are the elderly couple Beatrice and Axl. They live in a warren, which is described as a kind of town of tunnels and rooms dug into the side of a hill. They do not seem to totally belong in this underground community. For starters, they believe that a mysterious mist has covered the land causing everyone to lose hold of their memories. Axl and Beatrice seem to be the only ones aware of or concerned about this phenomena. Also, something happened recently where they had their candles taken away and Beatrice especially is still smarting from the indignity.
The first feeling I am struck with is the anxiety inherent in this mass forgetting. There is so much potential for calamity and tragedy in a world where you cannot fully recall anything. One scene, where Axl watches his neighbors fretting over a lost child but then quickly forgetting about her, is oddly chilling. There is a dangerous and drunken chaos to a community that can't remember, who is in upheaval at a lost daughter in one moment, then seeming to have forgotten about her completely in the next, even as she quietly returns to her family unharmed.
But it is Axl and Beatrice’s remembering in the face of their world’s forgetfulness that is most fraught for me. They come up with a plan early on, after certain hazy memories resurface, to go find their son who is vaguely elsewhere. Every time they bring up their son and speak of him in such glowing and hopeful terms, I am struck by what seems the inevitable reveal—their son is long dead or, worse, never existed.
Now, I know I said just a second ago that I had read and very much enjoyed this book, but that was almost ten years ago. All I really remember from the first reading are a few strong but isolated images and the general events of the final scene. But even for that scene, I don’t really remember the circumstances of it, just that when I read it first, I thought it was absolutely perfect and absolutely devastating. So, even though it is the whole purpose of their quest, I don’t totally remember what they find of their son, if anything. I'm glad for my forgetting, because the uncertainty and haziness that permeates these early chapters is really captivating, giving the story a really existential mystery and must be solved.
The other thing I'm struck with, as Axl and Beatrice prepare for their quest, is the earnest depths of their affection. Nearly every conversation between them is enormously endearing, even with their wordy and weirdly formal manner of speaking. It is an emotional tone that never seems forced or tedious. However, it's clear by the end of Part I that what has started out as charming characterization may be the first clue to the central mystery of the mist. Perhaps, Axl and Beatrice are not what they appear to be.
But, I'm getting ahead of myself.
After their first stop at a strange walled town, Beatrice and Axl get two companions. The cool and collected Saxon warrior, Wistan, and a boy, Edwin, whom Wistan had rescued from being killed by his superstitious neighbors. The town was in a little bit of an uproar because they believed that the boy had been bitten by an ogre, and they apparently think he'll become an ogre himself if bitten (superstition as an antisocial force is a motif). Edwin is an intense little kid with an outsider status and a missing mother, and Ishiguro gives us a few indications that he has a "chosen-one" future warrior status (which is maybe why Wistan essentially adopts him).
As they continue on with their parallel quests—Axl and Beatrice questing for their son, Wistan carrying out an unspecified mission for his king, and Edwin going full hero's journey no us—they meet a few characters: a trio of soldiers guarding a bridge and then a elderly knight resting with a weary horse.
The elderly knight is an almost impossibly old Gawain, King Arthur's nephew, and it's when the four of them sit and talk (Edwin's not big on conversation) that things get interesting. Wistan asks Gawain, out of the blue, if he recognizes Axl from long ago, and Gawain shows shock before denying that he does. This gives us real reason to think that Axl has a hidden and likely heroic past.
The flowery way Axl and Beatrice talk to each other supports this, mostly by contradicting their identity of simple farmers. They speak like well-bred royalty, comfortable in performative speech, but also enjoying the lasting embers of a real love-affair. Axl, after all, barely says anything to his wife without referring to her as "Princess". They do not speak like the other commoners that we see: crass, illiterate, and superstitious. Perhaps, something lies buried in their history that will be unearthed (like, I dunno...a buried giant?) at the end of their quest?
Or maybe that's just how they talk.
The overwrought dialogue is just delightful to read, and hearing it again does bring up one thing that I absolutely did not remember from my first reading: this book is funny. If you actually picture some of these scenes unfolding, they really do have a Monty Python and the Holy Grail vibe. When the one of the soldiers from the bridge reappears to challenge Wistan (who has been acting like a "mute fool" in front of him, rolling his eyes and giggling and drooling on himself, hilariously subverting his otherwise Saxon-warrior-suave), there is a very funny standoff. The soldier threatens Wistan and Edwin, forcing Wistan to admit his actual quest—to kill the dragon Querig—only to have the already comically-aged Gawain interject by saying, essentially, "but that's my quest!" Picturing it as a movie scene, I can't help but imagine Gawain as Michael Palin in silver beard and rusty armor, whining about how this jock is taking his quest and not letting a life-threatening situation stop him from saying so.
All of this to say, I'm finishing Part I remembering what I enjoyed about this majestic but also kinda wacky book. There's plenty of intrigue: is Edwin going to reunite with his mother and reach the status he seems destined to? What's the deal with Querig, really? Is this a fantasy world where dragons and ogres and King Arthur are actually real? Or is this a realistic world ruled by myths and superstitions and lore? What's up with this constant reference to being a Saxon or a Briton and how it doesn't matter because there is peace between them, but it clearly does matter because they keep bringing up who belongs to which tribe? And are they going to find their son? Are they going to remember their past? Will the giant be exhumed?
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There's one scene that I haven't talked about because it sticks out very strangely in this first section of the novel. Before Beatrice and Axl get to the walled town, as they are just starting their journey, they seek refuge from a storm in a shelter that Beatrice knew about from her own modest travels. In this shelter, they find a man and woman and some serious horror movie imagery. The woman is old, with sunken eyes and claw-like hands. She holds a tiny rabbit in her hands and holds a knife to the rabbit's throat; there are old blood stains scattered around her feet. The man is oddly tall, bald, and wears some clothing Axl associates with boatmen. After the man welcomes Beatrice and Axl, he requests that they listen to his plight.
Apparently the shelter was once his home and he often visits it when he's not working. Except the old woman shows up whenever he visits; she taunts him, curses him, accuses him of terrible things, and then slaughters rodents just to defile his childhood home with their blood.
But the woman rejects this characterization. It is the boatman, she says, who torments her. Apparently, she and her husband had sought the service of the boatman years ago to take them to an island. Except the boatman had somehow tricked them, leaving first with the husband and then returning only to deny the woman travel to the island, leaving her forever alone.
But the boatman has a rebuttal. The island has some magical qualities. It is a place that the boatman and his colleagues have carried hundreds of people to over the years, except that those that traveled to the island never encounter any other inhabitants. It was as if everyone who travels to the island is the only one there. According to him, after he had described the nature of the island, the woman decided she didn't want to go. Sometimes couples are allowed to go to the island together, but this is incredibly rare, and requires an especially strong bond. It is up to the boatmen to determine the strength of any couple's bond and if they are worthy of traveling together. How do they make this determination? They ask questions about their most cherished memories. In that way, they can tell if the couple is connected by an "abiding love that has endured the years" (43).
It is clear that Beatrice (and the reader) are thinking about if Axl and Beatrice have a bond that is abiding and enduring. It sure seems that they do. But the test to prove it is a test of memory. And it is this test that is presented here like Chekhov's gun: this novel surely can't end without our heroic couple being faced with this challenge.
What has to happen in the intervening chapters for them to succeed?
What will it mean if they fail?
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References:
Ishiguro, Kazuo. The Buried Giant. Alfred A. Knopf. 2015.
Wyeth, N.C. "Title Page Illustration." The Boy's King Arthur, edited by Sidney Lanier, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1917.
Media:
Consider accompanying your reading with this selection from Gia Margaret's dreamy 2023 album Romantic Piano:
Here's a classy video of Ishiguro talking about the role memory plays in with work after he won the Nobel Prize: