To continue my list of Do Likes (which so far contains Terry Pratchett) let me introduce you (as if you need an introduction) to Kazuo Ishiguro.

Kazuo Ishiguro

Ishiguro is a Japanese born English writer who has combined a spare Japanese style of writing with stunningly perceptive insights into human emotion, particularly an English-type repression, and elevated his novels into true art forms. As you can tell, I think he is brilliant and every book of his I read leaves me thinking “How does he DO that?”.

His books are grounded in character and it is his amazing abilities at characterisation that make him THE pre-eminent literary talent of our time (yes, that’s totally my opinion, but then I’m writing this! ). Story is always told through character and his writing has a strong filmic quality – by that I mean those moments in film where the picture is at odds with the dialogue – where the story and the emotion is being told visually and the through the disconnect of visual and speech. Somehow Ishiguro manages to replicate this exact same feeling and emotion but purely through words. He weaves this tapestry of words said and words unsaid and you think no-one should be able to do this in a book. That’s why I love his writing as much as I do.

Favourite book? Generally The Remains of the Day or Never Let Me Go are choosen by most as his best work, but personally my favourite is When We Were Orphans. This is not his most perfect work but for me it is the strongest representation of the quality I talked about, it is so multi-layered and the central character is so flawed and yet so human that it literally takes your breath away.

I don’t universally recommend Ishiguro to everyone. If you don’t like to think about what you’re reading, or if you do like your stories tied up in a nice bow and finished off with a flourish then Ishiguro is not the writer for you. But if you think life is not about appearances, real life is not about happy endings or even any kind of easy ending at all, everyone has a story to tell and everyone will tell you only their side of the story – then I hope you will love his books as much as BookieMonster.