i'm teaching...

...kazuo ishiguro's a pale view of the hills next semester except i decided i don't really like it. or i'm a bit ambivalent about it. concerns a japanese expat in england whose daughter's suicide echoes with memories of ww2 + the a-bomb unleashed over nagasaki. while the novel's subtlety + quietude in approaching such devasting events lend the book its initial promise, i thought the connections between present and past are ultimately too forced, almost secured with glue with the frayed edges of connect and disconnect, for that matter, obviously showing. a raggedy story - but what i'm trying to figure out is if that's what ishiguro intended - if the form and structure of the novel are supposed to mirror the unreliable fragmentation of memory and how, with time, both the individual and collective "we" succumb to a certain kind of "psychic numbing" to borrow robert jay lifton's term. simply on an aesthetic level, i'm not a huge fan of ishiguro's writing...but he is able to create images and so maybe more than a prose-writer, he's a visual-writer. there's nothing quite controversial or provocative about this novel- nothing that really steals my heart. i'm almost persuaded to yank it from the syllabus but a long prolonged sigh, i've already ordered my books + i don't want to deal with bookstore politics. perhaps a re-read will change my mind.