[Book Review #2] A Pale View of Hills
One-line comment: Prompted by her eldest daughter's suicide, Etsuko traces her memories of postwar Nagasaki — where she once encountered a lonely mother and daughter dreaming of America — as past and present quietly intertwine in a story that leaves an unsettling, fog-laden afterglow.
Basic Information
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| 📖 Title | A Pale View of Hills |
| ✍️ Author | Kazuo Ishiguro |
| 🏷️ Genre | Novel |
| 📅 Year Published | 1982 (Japanese edition 1984, translated by Ken Onodera) |
| ⏱️ Estimated Reading Time | Approx. 3–5 hours |
| 📅 Date Finished | April 12, 2025 |
| ⭐ Rating | ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5) |
Summary
Etsuko lives alone in England, quietly and without fuss. One day, prompted by the suicide of her eldest daughter, she begins to draw up distant memories — days in Nagasaki shortly after the war, when she was pregnant and encountered a peculiar mother and daughter: Sachiko and her young girl, Mariko.
In the midst of a ruined city, Sachiko lived with one dream alone: to make it to America. Two women's lives, separated by time, slowly converge. Sachiko's solitary silhouette gradually merges with Etsuko's own present-day loneliness and the guilt buried deep within her.
Etsuko's narration is hazy at the edges — the further you read, the more you feel as though you are wandering into fog. Quiet, yet somehow unsettling. It is a strange and captivating story that can also be read as a work of psychological mystery.
A Memorable Passage
"Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers."
— Opening of Chapter 9
This passage appears amid scenes involving Etsuko's father-in-law and the shifting values between prewar and postwar Japan. Immediately after this monologue, Etsuko begins to recount in detail how Sachiko mistreated her daughter Mariko — an episode that connects back to the suggestion, established at the novel's opening, that Etsuko played some role in driving her eldest daughter to suicide.
In other words, this monologue functions as foreshadowing: what I am about to tell you about Sachiko as a mother may be a memory I have conveniently rewritten. It struck me that what Etsuko chooses not to say — the silence she uses to protect herself — is precisely what brings the truth into relief.
Overall Thoughts
The technique of entrusting unspoken truths to the space between the lines reminded me of Hemingway's Iceberg Theory (*). It also struck me as the polar opposite of today's tendency to put everything into words. Those who get it, get it — that kind of intentional opacity is, personally, very much my style.
(*) The Iceberg Theory is a literary principle holding that what is left unwritten gives a work its depth and weight.
In Hemingway's own words:
"If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he know. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water." — Death in the Afternoon (1932)
Structural Overview
Specific Techniques
① Avoid writing emotions directly → Rather than writing "she was sad," convey sadness through a character's actions, dialogue, and silence.
② Don't explain → Leave a character's past and motivations largely unstated, letting the reader infer from fragments.
③ Layer short sentences and exchanges → Beneath a simple style, unspoken tension and emotion accumulate.
Recommended For
- Those who enjoy quiet, lyrical prose
- Those who enjoy psychological mystery
Thank you so much for reading.
I hope this proves useful to you.
See you in the next review!
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