Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, by Kazuo Ishiguro

To me, the title of this book suggests romance and melancholy, and Ishiguro delivers, particularly on the melancholy. For example, in the book's opening story, "Crooner," the narrator Jan, who plays guitar in a restaurant band in Venice, looks up to see legendary singer Tony Gardner at a table in the piazza. Gardner was Jan's mother's favorite singer, and when the band takes a break, he approaches Gardner. The two talk, and Gardner engages him to help serenade his wife, Lindy, that evening. After they perform, Jan hears Lindy sobbing in the palazzo above and Tony tells him the surprising reason for her tears.

But the stories also deliver humor. In "Come Rain or Come Shine," for example, a man visiting college friends reflexively crumples the page of a diary when he reads insulting descriptions of himself. In a vain attempt to pretend that a dog caused the damage, he is on all fours shaking magazines from his teeth when the diary's owner returns. In "Nocturne," the collection's longest piece, a jazz saxophonist whose wife has left him is recovering from plastic surgery in a luxury hotel; his manager and his soon-to-be-ex-wife have convinced him his looks are holding him back. In the room next door is Lindy Gardner. Both are wrapped in bandages, and Lindy takes advantage of the anonymity to roam the hotel at night, occasionally indulging in thievery. Suffice it to say that the two engage in some skulduggery involving stuffing a statuette in a turkey.

Scenes and motifs, like the character of Lindy Gardner, reappear in the stories. The final story takes place in the same Venetian piazza as the first. Several characters stand or sit at windows. And, of course, music plays a role in each story. For the hapless narrator of "Come Rain or Come Shine," American standards--and the memory of a shared passion for them--provide sustenance. For the puffed-up singer-songwriter who narrates "Malvern Hills," his talent sets him apart from the everyday labors of his sister and her husband, as well as the unappreciative bands for whom he auditioned unsuccessfully in London. In "Cellists," the mere idea of being a cello virtuoso has given an American woman her identity.

As I seem to say fairly often in these reviews, if a reader has not read some of Ishiguro's other works, I would recommend starting with one of his novels (e.g., The Remains of the Day or Never Let Me Go). Nonetheless, I enjoyed Nocturnes; I particularly appreciated use of music as a unifying motif.

Favorite passage:

There aren't many like us, Tibor, and we recognize each other. The fact that I've not yet learned to play the cello doesn't really change anything. You have to understand, I am a virtuoso. But I'm one who's yet to be unwrapped.

. . . I was getting vaguely paranoid about running into any more of my former university friends. Wandering around Camden Town, or going through CDs I couldn't afford in West End megastores, I'd already had too many of them come up to me, asking how I was getting on since leaving the course to "seek fame and fortune." It's not that I was embarrassed to tell them what I'd been up to. It was just that--with a very few exceptions--none of them was capable of grasping what was or wasn't, for me at this particular point, a "successful" few months.