Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 23
 I can buy the book new for less than the Kindle version February 16, 2010
Jeff
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
What's the point of buying it on Kindle if it costs more? Half the reason I bought it was to save money on books. I'm pretty sure the publishers don't need to supply ink, warehousing, distribution, printing, and the manpower for all of that if it's on a Kindle, so why nearly the same price as Barnes and Noble or Borders? Very old-school way of doing business, and I won't be buying from publishers living in the dark ages.
 Stories in a minor key January 28, 2010
Laurie A. Brown (SANDPOINT, ID USA)
Ishiguro writes his novels with rare power and grace. In the short story form, this power is diluted but still definitely there. The stories in this collection are linked by music, by failing relationships and by failing careers. The tales all play in a minor key; even the comedic sections are farce rather than sprightly wit.
A has-been singer engages a younger guitarist to serenade his wife, but not for the reasons the guitarist thinks. A man finds that his old college friends think of him- *need* to think of him- as a loser, with his taste in music his only redeeming quality. A singer/songwriter finds himself in the middle of the marital discord of a couple he's only just met. A cellist is tutored by a self declared virtuoso cellist with a secret. A gifted jazz musician who has never gotten a break lets himself be convinced that a new face will solve his career problems. Simple ideas, but made into stories with depth and insight.
 Classical short stories January 20, 2010
algo41 (cinnaminson, nj United States)
While the stories are of some length, they are classical short stories in that each explores a single theme/event. The narrators are men without worldly success, interacting with the more successful, but as the stories show, the successful have no reason at all to feel superior. Ishiguro, in a straightforward, understated story telling manner, manages to produce a wry commentary on the human condition which resonates with the reader (with an occasional bit of farce thrown in, which my wife found hysterical).
 when the deep purple falls January 18, 2010
Sacramento Book Review (Sacramento, CA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The best thing about Kazuo Ishiguro's new story collection is its musicality, the worst its masochism. I'll admit I wasn't a big fan of //The Remains of the Day//, either book or movie: the main character was so emotionally shrunken and robotic he seemed more of a construct than a human being. The characters in these new stories show a little more spunk, but they're still pretty enervated. The has-been singer in "Crooner" hires the narrator to serenade his wife just so he can break up with her; the lackluster husband in "Come Rain or Come Shine" coaxes its narrator into hanging around with his wife in the hope that the narrator will prove an even bigger schlub than he is. There's good comic potential in this kind of material (I kept imagining what Philip Roth might do with it), but it's made so plaintive and monochrome it just feels gimmicky and unconvincing.
To be fair, my reaction may be one of temperament: I tend to equate plaintive with whiny. Among other things, Ishiguro is a gifted composer, as he proved with several songs written for jazz singer Stacey Kent's recent album //Breakfast on the Morning Tram//. For me, his songs have more rhythm, more atmosphere, more life than anything in these stories. The album is first-rate: you should give it a listen.
Reviewed by James Vasser
Musica Non Esprime January 6, 2010
Yasmin H. McEwen (Ice skating over platitudes of longing)
Prelude in D Major: One most certainly won't come away without feeling a bit of a night breeze after reading Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall; however, one won't necessarily drift off to bed with life changing epiphanies either.
While reading this short collection of stories from a writer who is so adept at penning human nature and consequence, a few questions bloomed within the mind, and even after I'd stopped reading I couldn't quite put them to bed. 1) is this the new future of short story writing? Surely not. For, I haven't been living in the dark ages. Other favorite writers have been appearing in The New Yorker with more intricacy and depth. So, the answer to that one is no. Now have your glass of milk and off you go.
Apologia: 2) Is this what hip writers (Mr. Ishiguro certainly qualifies as hip) are striving for? Possibly. For there is gold in the short and the sweet. Crooner. Come Rain or Shine. Nocturne. These are the babes that I refer to. Come Rain or Shine is the best of the whole lot and holds weight even surpassing some classic Gunter Grass of which they seem to sidle up to at the bar. Though now it's time to eat my words: I wouldn't necessarily compare any of these stories with anyone else's writing, because Mr. Ishiguro is a classic individual. La Bella dazzling the crowd with prowess and eternal beauty: Come Rain or Shine is a story that one doesn't forget. I can still hear Emily's high pitched voice and Charlie yelling into the answering machine. I haven't laughed this hard for some time and that makes me wonder if a) I am not getting enough laughter and comic relief, or b) whether Ishiguro is simply that funny, I'm guessing that c) Ishiguro is funnier than most. I could play this story inside my head repeat the sounding measures of desperation mixed with humor and a hip beat of where the hell are we going in life and what do we do next and what in the hell will we do when we get very close to the edge? Love it! I hope this gets included in a Best of Short Stories collection. Somewhere. And now it's time for a little Bobby Darin, oops, I mean Tony Gardner. Crooner is hip, stylin and totally complete. It holds weight as the second runner up, if for the beautiful longing tale of the mother who sat with her legs curled beneath her, drink in hand, notes pulling ribbons out of her heart, one by one. No longing is served without complaint in Crooner. I do love the tone of this story. Humor is properly inserted along with quiet sarcasm (see Vittorio and Lindy Gardner).
Intermezzo: Nocturne is like having a dear friend throw pebbles at your window late at night and you get dressed and sneak out and the two of you go roving up and down the neighborhood talking and laughing waking up dogs and startling the streetlights. O Solo Mio: I absolutely love the narrators own wrestling with even the chance at fame and success; a near impossibility that he has longed for, now that it is a planet revolving closer he turns away. After the golden bird has perched among the dreaming we move on into the screaming batch of kids, thankfully, just two, that will be put to bed without a story. That's because these two whiners simply did not make their mark. One wonders what would have happened if the sheer magic of the aforementioned holding their weight in gold stories would simply have been lengthened and the two coming up short with no cigars might not have been told to try again next time, come back next season. I have nothing else to say but that in putting away the Violin and taking apart the bow, there were a couple very short clever passages in Malvern Hills, nod to the vagrant wanting of genuine inspiration in song writing and sadly, while I could sympathize with Tibor's grand longing, I found almost nothing to hold onto. Fini.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 23
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