Christopher Banks, an English boy born in early-20th-century Shanghai, is orphaned at age nine when both his mother and father disappear under suspicious circumstances. He grows up to become a renowned detective, and more than 20 years later, returns to Shanghai to solve the mystery of the disappearances.
Within the layers of the narrative told in Christopher's precise, slightly detached voice are revealed what he can't, or won't see: that the simplest desires - a child's for his parents, a man's for understanding - may give rise to the most complicated truths.
A feat of narrative skill and soaring imagination, When We Were Orphans is Kazuo Ishiguro at his brilliant best.
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[It was the summer of 1923, the summer I came down from Cambridge when despite my Aunt's wishes that I return to Shropshire, I decided my future lay in the capital and took up a small flat at Number 14b Bedford Gardens in Kensington]***
(@FaberBooks, 9 October 2014, 10 hours 6 minutes, audiobook, #popsugarreadingchallenge 2020, a book set in a country beginning with c, bought from @audibleuk, narrated by Michael Maloney)
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I'm a fan of Ishiguro and have read and enjoyed quite a lot of his books, especially Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day. I had high expectations for When We Were Orphans. I love mysteries and I love detective fiction. Ishiguro offers a literary take on both here. Christopher sets out to solve his own mysterious past when he sets out to uncover the truth about the disappearance of his parents more than 20 years before. I wondered why he waited so long. He could have started to look for them long before he did. I liked the way the book moves back and forth between the present with Christopher investigating what happened and following every painful clue and his past revealing events that led up to the disappearance. The book is incredibly sad at the end when Christopher finds out what really happened, how he has been lied to all these years and the fact he waited too late to solve the mystery.
