An Artist of The Floating World

Had this been my first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro I would have given this novel five stars. But after reading “A Pale View of Hills” and “The Remains of the Day” I am - how to say - used to his style and the relativity going on his books. Masuji Ono, the namegiving artist, is another typical protagonist of Ishiguro - as far as I have come to know his work. I deeply appreciate his style of telling the story from a purely subjective point of view. The way his characters relate stories from their past. ‘An Artist of the Floating World' worked great for me with Masuji's meandering voice and the hints at things and dark secrets that were yet in store for the reader. Yet somehow I was missing something here I found in his other works, or rather, I did not find more than what I had already found in his other works.

Broad brushstrokes

“Of course, at times, when I remember those brightly-lit bars and all those people gathered beneath the lamps, laughing a little more boisterously perhaps than those young men yesterday, but with much the same goodheartedness, I feel a certain nostalgia for the past and the district as it used to be. But to see how our city has been rebuilt, how things have recovered so rapidly over these years, fills me with genuine gladness. Our nation, it seems, whatever mistakes it may have made in the past, has now another chance to make a better go of things. One can only wish these young people well.” (206)