I am a big fan of this author. The Remains of the Day is one of my favorite books ever, and I also really enjoyed Never Let Me Go. One thing I like about Ishiguro, among many, is that he doesn’t ever write the same novel twice. RotD is about an English butler looking back on his life near the end of his career; NLMG is kind of a sci-fi novel about a group of clones who exist so that their organs can eventually be harvested; and I’m very excited for Ishiguro’s upcoming novel, The Buried Giant, which is a fantasy novel set in Arthurian England (UPDATE: This novel is out now, and I’ve read it and liked it a lot but haven’t written about it yet).

When We Were Orphans, meanwhile, is sort of a detective novel in the same way that NLMG was sort of a sci-fi novel. What I mean is that while the novel is about a detective, and contains many of the element of a typical detective novel, the various cases the main character solves or fails to solve are mentioned only in passing. Even the driving mystery of the story — the disappearance of the protagonist’s parents — goes without the usual treatment, and its ultimate solution is drawn only in broad strokes and without offering the reader much of the satisfaction of having arrived at the truth.

So this book is not really a mystery story in the way we usually understand that term. Instead it’s a novel about the way our memories can warp, fade, or otherwise change over time, altering our perceptions of ourselves, the people we know, and the things that happen to us. It’s clear almost from the beginning that the protagonist, eminent detective Christopher Banks, is probably not a reliable narrator. Other characters will remember things differently than he does, or he’ll brush aside a seemingly important incident with a dismissive phrase, not bothering to relate all that happened.

What’s less clear, and I think deliberately so, is the extent to which Banks’ narration can be believed at all. Is he really a great detective, or is he just some poor sap whose delusions of grandeur have made him a subject of mockery to everyone he encounters? You would think that’s a pretty central question, but the book doesn’t ever give you a means of determining its answer with any very high degree of certainty. It’s a big full of unanswered questions like this. There’s never any reason to believe the narrator is lying to the reader — he almost certainly is not — but there’s never any way of being sure that anything he’s saying is true, either, and some of it almost certainly is not. Banks gives us the truth as he perceives it, and that’s all we ever get. Ishiguro doesn’t offer answers, even at the end (In fact, I think there’s a good case to be made that the entire last third of the book never actually happens at all).

Despite all this, the book is a great read, mostly because of how effectively it makes you consider these types of questions and their answers, not only as they pertain to the character in the book but also in your own life. What truths are my memories protecting me from?

Another thing I liked about this novel was the writing. Some people might find Ishiguro’s spare, undramatic prose a little boring, but I am not one of those people. I like the deceptive simplicity of the writing. There’s something really impressive about how each sentence and each paragraph and each chapter springs naturally from the last and slides effortlessly into the next. What seems like an aside unfolds into a revelation; a passing memory becomes an important plot twist, and it never feels contrived. I can’t think of any authors who do this as well as Ishiguro does.

In the end, When We Were Orphans is not as good as either The Remains of the Day or Never Let Me Go, in my opinion. It’s not quite as tightly focused as either of those novels, and because the author chooses to leave so many questions unanswered, it suffers for its relative overabundance of threads to follow. Additionally, the lack of clarity about what is true and what is not true makes it hard to develop any sort of meaningful bond with or empathy for the characters. Still, it’s Ishiguro, which means it’s thought-provoking, well-written, and a good book.