The Buried Giant

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

Genre: fantasy

I read it as a(n): hardback

Length: 317 pp

Her Grace’s rating: 2 out of 5 stars

I…did not understand this book. I’ve got plenty of game. I can talk about the allegory of the buried giant as the letting go of or forgetting of old grudges. I get that the mist is the collective forgetting that happens when we rewrite history or lose meaningful parts of history. I can understand the symbolism (So. Much. Symbolism) of the dragon, the pilgrimage, or the boatman. I can talk about how each person in the group of Axl, Beatrice, Wistan, Gawain, and Edwin represents a different social strata and that they collectively serve as a microcosm of post-Roman Britain. 

But I still do not understand this book. What even happened in it? I wanted to love it so much. I love most things even remotely related to Arthurian legend. But there was an old couple and a warrior and a kid and they all met Sir Gawain and then there’s a dragon and some monks and the kid’s weird visions and a boat and the end. All with nothing really happening. The characters were flat. Most of them were totally blank to me. I didn’t care about their quest or the fact that they couldn’t remember. The tidbits of memory from Axl were not tempting to me. There was nothing exciting, no plot progression, nada. Just, like…ok? And? 

I think people who enjoy introspective and meditative narratives will love it. That is usually me, but not this time. I could go on for days about it and still come up with nothing much. So weird.