It’s really embarrassing to me how slow I’m reading this book. While I’ve been involved in hypertext writing and coding for same, that’s really not an excuse for not allowing some reading time, and this story just hasn’t kept me coming back at a regular rate or impel me to read more than a couple pages at a time.
First there’s the language. Now the writing is indeed clean but even from one who’s writing had once been called Byzantine Ishiguro’s prose is a tad stilted and old fashioned:
Naturally I too had been taking the opportunity to observe Brodsky quite carefully. He had been placed at the table a little larger than the rest. Hoffman was to one side of him, the Countess on the other. The rest of his company comprised a ring of solemn grey-haired men. The way these latter seemed continuously to be conferring under their breaths gave the table a conspiratorial air hardly helpful to the general atmosphere. (p. 138)
The only thing I can get excited about is that I, like Ishiguro, prefer to spell ‘grey’ with an ‘e’.
The pace is not exactly flying as we are still building up to this event and yet do not quite know why the whole town is molding Brodsky as their hometown ‘celebrity’ nor what Ryder’s role is in this scenario. I was flicking with the idea that all are metaphors but in trying to pin down that meaning, I’ve lost interest in the story.
But I’ve passed the 50-page rule, so I shall slog onward.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology