When we were orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro – A book review

Christopher Bank is a celebrated detective in London but the one case that has always been haunting him is the mysterious/enigmatic disappearance of his parents when he lived in Shanghai. As an investigator, he relentlessly gathers facts and clues to substantiate his theories and connections; and after all these years he is closer in his pursuit than he ever was to reveal the truth and get them back, he thinks. He thinks! But little does he know, for the puzzle box he’d opened years ago and the pieces he’d been putting together, the rules of the game had been changed and the actual picture had already been put together, stacked somewhere unsafely in one of the horrendous dusty shelves of life. That he was a part of this altered and orchestrated puzzle never occurred to him; how would it? 

What he finally finds out is not just tragic but horrible. He himself is a case that has been solved years ago. An intelligently written book, I liked the style where every character is introduced in a sort of casual and informal manner as if you knew them from before.

And in these meandering lanes of search are intensities, a love for someone not liked, a passionate hatred for a true yet unrequited love, and a loathing nurtured to grow so strong that the result is a shattering of all boundaries of moral cognizance.

We are lucky. Most of us, in our lifetimes, are fortunate to get away committing small atrocities of power, hatred, jealousy and the likes. And we are forgiven. Or they’re never found out. Or they’re forgotten. We are indeed favoured to not be presented with empowered situations where we realize our power over someone or a situation and are equipped to exercise it surreptitiously. If this weren’t true, the number of encaged lurking demons within ourselves would surprise us, they with their evil piercing fiery eyes and devilish grin, swooshing around in an unsettled trance all ready to tear down and rip apart at command. It would not only scare and shame us as we sit there lost in despair, finding it hard to believe we were ever capable of this abominable mess.

Beware and be thankful.

My rating – 8/10

Images courtesy:
Book cover – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28923.When_We_Were_Orphans
Kazuo Ishiguro - https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/10/15/557217635/nobel-laureate-kazuo-ishiguro-once-wrote-a-screenplay-about-eating-a-ghost