Etsuko refers to dreams and Sachiko refers to make-believes, and the emphasis is on the confused perception, with the narrator also refusing to talk openly about what is really bothering her. His novels An Artist of the Floating World (1986), When We Were Orphans (2000), and Never Let Me Go (2005) were all shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. This is another Ishiguro story (his debut) full of mystery and questions, what’s happening and what is at the heart of the matter? She seems very afraid of Etsuko and confuses her with a mysterious, possibly imaginary, woman who comes at night and tries to take her away.

There is a quietness to Ishiguro’s writing that makes the strange and sometimes awful things that happen in his books seem even stranger and more mundanely awful. It nicely describes the two countries, how people act and react, and what life has been like for this character throughout her time in both places.The second generations of war survivors carried the burden of deep transgenerational trauma and wounds, the ones that inevitably integrated through their parents, as explored in Maus ( review here). In the destruction of Nagasaki, the westernization of Japan, has the dust risen up to make the way forward a blind man's game?

I missed a few words and misunderstood a key part the first time I read it, but the re-reeading was so much better.

Sachiko’s/Etsuko’s total break with her Japanese past is embodied by the scene with the drowning kittens. Quite possibly, some of the episodes describing the girl Mariko really relate to the girl or young woman Etsuko. She is very black and white about things, in the way people are while young and still experiencing life as a challenge to be conquered, rather than as an existence to make peace with. Even towards own children like in case of Sachiko and her daughter Marico: whereas the latter is sentimental and extremely kind towards all the creatures, her mother is an over-ambitious if foolish lady who cannot discern the difference between a true well-wisher and a depraved person.

Since she as narrator of the novel resists telling us, and mightily resists looking back on the realities of her own past, we have to do a lot of guessing. A distant, controlling husband who didn’t seem to care or notice when Etsuko, several months pregnant, left their apartment many a night to hang out with Sachiko. During much of the dialogue in the flashback between Etsuko and Sachiko, they are debating a topic or trying to make a decision. I feel that by Etsuko unreliably remembering these instances, it indicates that she blames herself for her daughter’s suicide.Much of the interactions between the two women suggest a parallel between good mother and bad mother. If I’m being cryptic, it’s because I don’t want to ruin the it all for you though I do really think Ishiguro learnt from this book. Speaks Japanese still with his parents, yes, but in one interview he has described his use of the language as a pidgin Japanese. Almost everything that happens to the characters of A Pale View of Hills would not probably have happened if not for the war.