At the time of the present in the action of the novel, in England, Etsuko is left only with her daughter Niki. The second daughter’s father was British and the woman moved to England where her visiting daughter was raised. Reading an interview with Ishiguro I see that even he feels the end of the book is too much of a puzzle. Etsuko also remembers that there was a child killer hanging kids in the neighborhood back in the day. We hadn't experienced the war years, but we'd at least been brought up by parents whose lives had been indelibly shaped by them.

We know that Etsuko married again and moved to England with her Western husband and she says that she knew this would make Keiko very unhappy. Keiko has a younger half-sister, Niki, who is visiting Etsuko and the story is told through Etsuko's recollections of one Summer in Japan after the second World War. There are times when Etsuko’s conversations with Sachiko suggest interior conversations she may have had with herself, when contemplating leaving her husband and her country with a foreigner. Ishiguro himself has said that readers shouldn't ponder too hard on the mysteries of this novel - he hadn't intended it to be such a 'conundrum' - but I find that hard to believe, given all the clues and incredibly subtle nuances. Was Etsuko strongly attached to her British husband, with whom she lived in England for some twenty years?

The devastation of the war is not only instant but long-lasting, making deep marks in the generations to come.

We know that the man she came to England with was her second husband, yet back in Nagasaki, she’s pregnant with the child of her first husband, Jiro. Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers, and no doubt this applies to certain of the recollections I have gathered here. Ogata-San’s own son, Jiro, while not openly attacking his father, also seems inclined to Matsuda’s beliefs. Here, Etsuko acknowledges that her narrative may not be reliable, as well as admits that she did feel an “eerie” connection with Sachiko. The novel is tight, 75% dialogue, exquisitely concise, devoid of flowery sentences/descriptions, no bullshit and beautiful.

My recent reread of When We Were Orphans reminded me that my Kazuo Ishiguro collection wasn’t quite complete as I was missing his first novel, but while I was planning to get myself a copy at some point, ‘some point’ arrived rather sooner than expected.