Ishiguro has written a haunting meditation on memory. In a post Arthurian England, an elderly couple embark on a journey. As they encounter ogres, pixies, knights and dragons they are teased by wisps of lost memories; perhaps past transgressions and dark deeds, perhaps a loss they cannot seem to grasp.
Can we truly love if we cannot remember our lives spent together. Without memory, what binds us and keeps love alive? Is forgiveness possible when the memory of any injury is lost in a mist?
“Should memories return, and among them of times I disappointed you. Or yet of dark deeds I may once have done to make you look at me and see no longer the man you do now. Promise, princess, you’ll not forget what you feel in your heart for me at this moment. For what good’s a memory’s returning from the mist if it’s only to push away another?"
It took me a while to grow comfortable with the language and cadence of this novel, however, like the mist that enchanted the land and its people, I too became enchanted by this tale of lost memory, and chivalry, and above all, the endurance of true love.
This is a book to be savoured, and not rushed.