The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro

Hello!

I'm writing another book review! Like Never Let Me Go, it's written by Kazuo Ishiguro, though it's set in Arthurian times. It's a really interesting book - it makes you think a lot about things like forgiveness and revenge. So I thought it would be fun to share my thoughts.

The book is divided into four parts. Uniquely, the main protagonists are an elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice. The first part starts with Axl and Beatrice discussing visiting their son - he lives in a village nearby, and they haven't seen him in a long time. Funny thing is, they can barely remember him - they just have the vague knowledge that they have a son... This ties in with the main theme of the book - memory and forgetfulness. The rest of the village where Axl and Beatrice lives has the same problem, regarding memories - for instance, a child went missing some time prior. For a few hours, everyone was panicking, but eventually they simply forgot the child; when she turns back up some hours later, only Axl remembers that everyone was panicking, and now they react as if she never went missing. Beatrice, during one conversation, immediately pinpoints what the memory loss is caused by - it's a mist causing it. As it happens, the mist is the breath of a dragon called Querig, and it is responsible for the memory loss - though this isn't confirmed until the second part.

The front cover

At the start of the book, Axl and Beatrice agree to visit their son. A couple of days into the journey, they take up with two Saxons - a young soldier called Wistan, and a thirteen-year-old boy called Edwin. They also meet Sir Gawain - the Gawain. He's an old man now, Arthur having died when Gawain was in his twenties. The travellers take the mountain route to their destination, because Beatrice is experiencing aches and pains, and she wants to visit monks in the nearby monastery to check her over. Some Britons attack the monastery, having gotten wind of the Saxons holed up there; after a hasty escape, the travellers part ways. Gawain, Edwin and Wistan make for Querig, to kill her, while Beatrice and Axl depart for their son's village. Then they get lost downstream and find their way to a homestead where there are three children on their own. Thanks to the mist, their parents wandered off and forgot they had children! The children provide Beatrice and Axl with a goat fed on poison, so they can go up the hill and trick Querig into eating it, which would kill her. And the goat, I guess. The travellers reunite by accident, with considerable indignation on Gawain's part. They leave Edwin tied to a stake outside the dragon lair (it makes sense in context) and enter the lair. Wistan kills the dragon, breaking the spell; he and Edwin head off west. Beatrice and Axl travel to the side of a lake, where they meet a boatman, who takes them to an island where they'll find their son. As for Gawain - his fate is a spoiler. Which, ironically, makes it clear that something happened, I suppose.

Sir Gawain!

What's interesting about The Buried Giant is the historical context. The Arthurian mythos is generally held to be set in the late 400s or early 500s; the book takes place several decades after Arthur died, so mid-to-late 500s. King Arthur famously waged war on the Saxons...as The Buried Giant makes clear, this involved attacking and slaughtering existing Saxon settlements. Despite that, peace has reigned for the last...50-ish years. Querig is the reason - her breath has made people forget the past, and in the process forget past grievances. But there are people remembering those grievances - in the east of England, Saxons are preparing for war. Wistan was sent to kill Querig specifically to undo the mist and make the Saxons spread across England remember. There's a deliberate contrast between forgiving and forgetting, and remembering and vengeance - peace has only lasted for this long because nobody could remember anything - remembrance would spark violence and war. In the same way, Ishiguro highlights which option humanity will generally take. Wistan, being young and fresh, represents vengeance and remembrance. Querig, by contrast, represents peace and forgiveness; she's old and frail, and easily overcome by Wistan. Another aspect of that vengeance which is interesting is the cycle of revenge. Saxons invaded in the first place - after Roman rule of Britain broke down, Saxon invaders took advantage of British weakness to settle. In some senses, therefore, Arthur's campaign against the Saxons was just defending his nation from invaders, though he went too far when he started attacking settled Saxons.

The dichotomy of vengeance versus forgiveness is also illustrated in Wistan's attitude towards the Christian God. Coming from a culture where deities will punish wrongdoing rather than forgive, he's virtually disgusted by the concept of a God who forgives and simply trusts His people to do the right thing next time. Wistan is quite literally incapable of understanding the concept of forgiveness, or trusting people to learn from their mistakes, for that matter. It's symbolic of the desire for revenge that some Saxons have fomented over the last few decades. Moreover, this already mounting desire for revenge reflects the fact that Querig's breath could only ever be a temporary solution; the scars of the past still exist, and still need to be resolved. In some ways, the departure of the mist might be a good thing - remembering the past would enable people to confront it, make lasting change. In the same way, the mist's existence was not wholly a good thing - it divided families, such as the children with the goat. Another aspect of that is the boatmen - they ferry people to an island where you can live in perfect solitude. Sometimes they take couples, but only if their love is demonstrably pure. One hitch with that - the mist. How can you prove that your love is pure, when you can't even remember your life? As a result, couples have been separated, with the boatmen only taking one of them across, leaving them separated.

The true tragedy of The Buried Giant is that, given time, those grievances could have faded. Axl and Beatrice's relationship is a microcosm of the Saxon-Briton divide. Their love wasn't always perfect: at one time, Axl did something which upset Beatrice, so she slept with another guy just to spite him. Their son, being an adult, was (understandably) horrified by his parents behaving so childishly, and left; while he was away, a plague swept through the land and he died. For years, Axl, hurt by Beatrice's affair, refused to make things up to her by visiting their son's grave together...even though he couldn't actually remember the details of the incident. But, on the day the story starts, that spitefulness had finally evaporated; it was why he finally agreed to visit their son. In short, Axl came to forgive Beatrice over time; potentially, over time, the scars left by the Britons slaughtering the Saxons could have faded as well. On the other hand, just as these scars weren't gone, simply ignored, part of the reason it took so long for Axl to forgive Beatrice was because they couldn't remember that argument, or the source of it, so they were unable to resolve it.

Ultimately, what I like about The Buried Giant is that it's got a multi-faceted ending. For the British settlements as a whole, it's decidedly not a happy ending - they're about to get annihilated the same way their ancestors annihilated Saxon settlements, and those who survive will be assimilated into Saxon culture, or else driven into Cornwall and Wales. For Beatrice and Axl, they get to escape the coming cataclysm, sheltered on an island away from everything else, so it's a bittersweet ending for them. They remember that their son is dead, they know that everybody they know will likely go the same way, but they will escape unharmed; they have each other. The Saxons get their revenge...though it's short-lived. History time! The Vikings started raiding and settling from the 780s onward, so the Saxons and Britons alike have at most a century before some of the most renowned raiders in European history knock on England's doors. Overall, I would rate The Buried Giant 9/10; I highly recommend it!

Disclaimer: this is not an actual historical Viking.

Random observations:

-There's a few non-sequiturs in the book, such as a scene where Axl and Beatrice get attacked by river-spirits. During that scene, the spirits imply that Beatrice's pains are more than she believes them to be. I like it - it emphasises the supernatural elements of the book.

-The monks at the monastery have, by the events of the book, taken to letting birds peck them to make up for their sins. Wistan is horrified, and I agree - the whole point of Jesus' crucifixion is that we don't need to suffer anymore to prove that we repent. We just need to repent, and then live according to God's wishes.

-When discussing the circumstances of their argument at the end of the book, Beatrice and Axl say that their son was old enough to recognise the wrongness of committing adultery to spite someone, but too young to understand the complexities of their relationship. Me, I agree with him - I'm nearly 20, and if my mum cheated on my dad to spite him, I'd definitely have issues with that sort of childishness. 

-The beginning of the book has an almost post-apocalyptic feel to it. It makes sense, considering the fall breakdown of Roman rule in Britain and the fall of Arthur's regime.

-It also makes the coming events even more tragic - the Britons have already suffered two cataclysms within living memory (Arthur's fall and the plague), and another only a century ago, and a fourth is about to happen.

-The cataclysm wasn't all bad, though - plenty of Britons survived, assimilated into Saxon culture.

-Beatrice suggests that the mist is God - He's forgotten things, so people have also forgotten them. It's an interesting point - the situation could be God's way of attempting to remedy the conflict between Britons and Saxons. There is the fact that the monks are feeding Querig, to keep her alive and therefore keep the mist going - perhaps God spoke to them in visions.