Nocturnes

Ishiguro is a wonderfully versatile author, as the broad range of styles adopted in his works amply show. Nocturnes is his first (and only) collection of short stories. The quintet in this volume demonstrate the seemingly effortless genius of simply being able to write well. Although the five stories are loosely linked by the topic of music (and one character who appears in two of them), each evokes a distinct atmosphere of its own, whether set in Italy, rural England, London, the U.S. or a nameless city. The other commonality is the almost elegiac nature in which each tale is told. The characters reflect on their lot in life, asking the perennial questions of what could have been or might possibly be (based on the alignment of metaphorical stars). Implicitly, music is characterised as either an escape route (from the tedium of life) or a portal to a new and hopefully better world.

By Kazuo Ishiguro