A review by jendella
An Artist of the Floating World, by Kazuo Ishiguro

4.0

I’m discovering that really enjoy Kazuo Ishiguri’s approach to storytelling. This book is like looking at various different sketches and vignettes, as the narrator reflects on his past and his present, and they carefully layer together to build a picture that is delicately constructed and really intriguing. Maybe if you don’t have patience the patience for a slow-builder, it won’t be for you, but it’s set in Japan post-WWII and is about a country rebuilding itself and a people reckoning with their past, all told through the story of Ono, a man whose fate was once tied to the vision of a Japan long gone, and, for better or for worse, has survived the upheaval.