Book Review: A Pale View of Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro
A Pale View of Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro My rating: 3 Read: 22 February - 14 March 2026 Book of 2026: 6 Kazuo Ishiguro’s highly acclaimed debut, first published in 1982 , tells the story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. Retreating into the past, she finds herself reliving one particular hot summer in Nagasaki when she and her friends struggled to rebuild their lives after the war. But as she recalls her strange friendship with Sachiko - a wealthy woman reduced to vagrancy - the memories start to take on a disturbing cast. I read The Remains of the Day for my English Literature A Level and found it difficult to get through, but ended up writing a first rate essay contrasting it with P.G. Woodhouse (tooting my own horn for a brief, rare second). Anyway, Ishiguro has always been an author I wanted to return to, having contemplated The Remains of the Day since finishing it and finding myself unable to shake t...
