These are five lovely stories which all deal with very vulnerable individuals and the critical role of music in their lives. Ishiguro’s tales embrace a wide range of life’s challenges, from loss and loneliness to romance and recovery, to friendship and fulfillment. The recurrence of certain characters from one story to another lends a hint of continuity, almost like a piece of music with five movements and an occasionally recurrent theme.
In one story, an aging singing legend takes his beloved on a final trip to Venice to relive their beginning, and to say farewell with a song. In another, a talented musician is convinced to undergo plastic surgery as the answer to his flagging career. He learns some important truths along the way, but watch for the turkey. In yet another story, a businessman man who fears for his marriage, invites a “loser” buddy from his college days for a visit but then takes off on a business trip, in hopes the comparison to his college friend will boost his image in his wife’s eyes. Confusion, self-delusion, an imaginary dog, and hysterical hijinks abound, but the wife’s taste in music trumps all.
The final story, about a young immigrant from Eastern Europe trying to make it as a cellist in Italy, is heartbreaking and also revealing. He is picked up by an American woman who says she can tutor him to become one of the greats, and in a leap of trust, he agrees to her mentoring. Under her tutelage, he begins to tap into his inner genius, only to discover that the woman has never even played the cello but is convinced that she is a virtuoso who has yet to be “unwrapped.” And aren’t we all?
Ishiguro plumbs the heights and depths of the human experience in simple but expressive language, and he does so with finesse, with hilarity, and with a great deal of pathos to remind us that these could just as easily be our stories.
