The music of chance

That disorienting sense of who or what it is that is moving forward binds the five stories in this remarkable collection. In each story someone is attempting to measure the time and distance that now separate him from long-held aspirations. Most of them are musicians,some (like Gardner) trying to regain a semblance of that old star feeling but most just getting by on odd jobs (like Jan). Others (like the two main characters in the second story,“Come Rain or Come Shine”) are finding the parameters that could explain their discontent with how life’s turned out,and a momentary anchor with a song they’d loved in university.

All must wonder — have they moved into a lower orbit that the one they’d aspired to,or have they stayed stationary,with the world around them moving on? Ishiguro has a special skill for leaving his stories tantalisingly,but somehow wholesomely,unresolved. That came through in his six previous novels: A Pale View of the Hills and An Artist of the Floating World (both looking back to post-war Japan,a country Ishiguro’s parents left for England in the late fifties when he was five years old),The Remains of the Day (his Booker Prize-winning novel about a butler’s late interrogation of the notion of duty and propriety),The Unconsoled,When We Were Orphans (a computer game-inspired take on early 20th century Shanghai) and Never Let Me Go (a futuristic story about clones set in the past).

Nocturnes is Ishiguro’s first collection of short stories,and while the stories have his characteristic capture of vagueness,they are different from his earlier work for the richly urban,and always cosmopolitan,voice of his narrator. This is not a book to be read in one sitting. As each story ends,it takes a while for the seemingly set pieces to dissolve into a gathering mood of uncertainty,a sense of uncertainty founded upon strongly drawn life stories. Ishiguro’s characters are driven by a need to be held accountable; and in the absence of a social system that demands it of them,they flounder,finding the oddest of situations to recount a balancing of their ledger.

In “Come Rain or Come Shine”,Emily and Ray meet in her well-appointed London flat. Friends from college,and with Emily now long married to Ray’s best friend,they collide against her impatience of her rather successful city husband’s inability to reach even higher career goals. Ray had always opted out of the career track,bouncing around Europe,teaching English and,presumably,being himself. Ray must wonder: is he a failure because he never wanted more or because his friends want more for him?

In “Malvern Hills”,a struggling singer-songwriter escapes his bare existence in London for his sister’s hospitality in the countryside. As he works on a song,he assesses the interactions with family and chance acquaintances on how they react to his music. We don’t really know how good or bad his music is — only how worthwhile the others are,depending on this narrow criterion.

The story,“Cellists”,loops back to Jay and to Venice,with a young musician finding his music changed by deception. The collection ends with it still not clear whether he will get on,taking that deception as experience,or whether it’ll break him to ordinariness.
Taken together,Nocturnes affirms Ishiguro’s skilful instinct for place (perhaps that is why The Unconsoled,with its dream-like setting,did not quite work) and time. The collection aptly closes at a Venice cafe,with Jan’s narration balancing the sadness of the stories by conveying a large-heartedness to hear out stories in other chance encounters.