Author | Kazuo Ishiguro |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Short story collection |
Publisher | Faber and Faber |
Publication date | 7 May 2009 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Print (hardback) |
Pages | 221 pp |
ISBN | 978-0-571-24498-0 |
OCLC | 310156229 |
Preceded by | Never Let Me Go |
Followed by | The Buried Giant |
Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall is a 2009 collection of short fiction by Kazuo Ishiguro. After six novels, it is Ishiguro's first collection of short stories, though it is described by the publisher as a "story cycle". As the subtitle suggests, each of the five stories focuses on music and musicians, and the close of day. The hardback was published by Faber and Faber in the United Kingdom on 7 May 2009 and in the United States by Knopf in September 2009.
As the subtitle suggests, each story focuses on music and musicians, and the close of day. All of the stories have unfulfilled potential as a linking theme, tinged with elements of regret. The second and fourth stories have comic undertones. The first and final stories feature cafe musicians, and the first and fourth stories feature the same character. All five stories have unreliable male narrators and are written in the first person. [1]
Upon release, Nocturnes was generally well-received. [3] [4] Culture Critic assessed critical response as an aggregated score of 81% based on British press reviews. [5] [6] According to Book Marks, based mostly on American publications, the book received a "positive" consensus, based on eleven critic reviews: four "rave", six "positive", and one "mixed". [7] On November/December 2009 issue of Bookmarks, the book received a (3.5 out of 5) based on critic reviews a summary saying, "Perhaps Entertainment Weekly summed it up best by stating that Nocturnes, by any other writer, would be praiseworthy; by a celebrated author like Ishiguro, it can best be likened to a minor work from a master composer". [8]
Robert Macfarlane writes in The Sunday Times that "Closing the book, it’s hard to recall much more than an atmosphere or an air; a few bars of music, half-heard, technically accomplished, quickly forgotten." [9] Christian House of The Independent writes that "Ultimately this is a lovely, clever book about the passage of time and the soaring notes that make its journey worthwhile". [10]
Sir Kazuo Ishiguro is a Japanese-born British novelist, screenwriter, musician, and short-story writer. He is one of the most critically acclaimed contemporary fiction authors writing in English, having been awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature. In its citation, the Swedish Academy described Ishiguro as a writer "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world".
The Remains of the Day is a 1989 novel by the Nobel Prize-winning British author Kazuo Ishiguro. The protagonist, Stevens, is a butler with a long record of service at Darlington Hall, a fictitious stately home near Oxford, England. In 1956, he takes a road trip to visit a former colleague, and reminisces about events at Darlington Hall in the 1920s and 1930s.
The Malvern Hills are in the English counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and a small area of northern Gloucestershire, dominating the surrounding countryside and the towns and villages of the district of Malvern. The highest summit affords a panorama of the Severn Valley, the hills of Herefordshire and the Welsh mountains, parts of thirteen counties, the Bristol Channel, and the cathedrals of Worcester, Gloucester and Hereford.
Steven John Isserlis is a British cellist. An acclaimed soloist, chamber musician, educator, writer and broadcaster, he is widely regarded as one of the leading musicians of his generation. He is also noted for his diverse repertoire and distinctive sound which is deployed with his use of gut strings.
In English literature, the term comedy of manners describes a genre of realistic, satirical comedy of the Restoration period (1660–1710) that questions and comments upon the manners and social conventions of a greatly sophisticated, artificial society. The satire of fashion, manners, and outlook on life of the social classes, is realised with stock characters, such as the braggart soldier of Ancient Greek comedy, and the fop and the rake of English Restoration comedy. The clever plot of a comedy of manners is secondary to the social commentary thematically presented through the witty dialogue of the characters, e.g. The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), by Oscar Wilde, which satirises the sexual hypocrisies of Victorian morality.
Never Let Me Go is a 2005 science fiction novel by the British author Kazuo Ishiguro. It was shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize, for the 2006 Arthur C. Clarke Award and for the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award. Time magazine named it the best novel of 2005 and included the novel in its "100 Best English-language novels published since 1923—the beginning of TIME". It also received an ALA Alex Award in 2006. A film adaptation directed by Mark Romanek was released in 2010; a Japanese television drama aired in 2016.
A Pale View of Hills (1982) is the first novel by Nobel Prize–winning author Kazuo Ishiguro. It won the 1982 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. He received a £1000 advance from publishers Faber and Faber for the novel after a meeting with Robert McCrum, the fiction editor.
Stacey Kent is an American jazz singer from South Orange, New Jersey.
The Sea is a 2005 novel by John Banville. His fourteenth novel, it won the 2005 Booker Prize.
An Artist of the Floating World (1986) is a novel by British author Kazuo Ishiguro. It is set in post-World War II Japan and is narrated by Masuji Ono, an ageing painter, who looks back on his life and how he has lived it. He notices how his once-great reputation has faltered since the war and how attitudes towards him and his paintings have changed. The chief conflict deals with Ono's need to accept responsibility for his past actions, rendered politically suspect in the context of post-War Japan. The novel ends with the narrator expressing good will for the young white-collar workers on the streets at lunchbreak. The novel also deals with the role of people in a rapidly changing political environment and with the assumption and denial of guilt.
Jaafar Modarres-Sadeghi is an Iranian novelist and editor.
After Dark is a 2004 novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami.
Never Let Me Go is a 2010 British dystopian romantic drama film based on Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 novel of the same name. The film was directed by Mark Romanek from a screenplay by Alex Garland. Never Let Me Go is set in alternative history and centres on Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy, portrayed by Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, and Andrew Garfield, respectively, who become entangled in a love triangle. Principal photography began in April 2009. Filming locations included Andrew Melville Hall and Forest School, Walthamstow. The film was produced by DNA Films and Film4 on a US$15 million budget.
Chronicles: Volume One is a memoir written by American musician Bob Dylan. The book was published on October 5, 2004, by Simon & Schuster.
Arthur William Phoenix Young Jeffes is an English composer, musician, and arctic explorer. He is the frontman of the musical group Penguin Cafe, a group he formed in 2007 to play the music of his father's band, the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. He is one half of the band Sundog.
The Buried Giant is a fantasy novel by the Nobel Prize-winning British writer Kazuo Ishiguro, published in March 2015.
Bianca Bagnarelli is an Italian-French artist, writer, illustrator and cartoonist. In 2015, the Society of Illustrators awarded her the gold medal in the short form category of their juried Comic and Cartoon Art Competition for her short graphic novel Fish. In 2016, she won the Lorenzo Bartoli prize for the most promising Italian cartoonist.
All Gates Open: The Story of Can is a book about the German experimental rock band Can, written by British writer and editor Rob Young and Can founding member Irmin Schmidt. It was published in May 2018 in the United Kingdom by Faber and Faber in two editions, a trade edition in hardback, and a handbound and autographed limited edition.
Klara and the Sun is the eighth novel by the British writer Kazuo Ishiguro, published on 2 March 2021. It is a dystopian science fiction story.
Living is a 2022 British historical drama film directed by Oliver Hermanus. Its screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro was adapted from the 1952 Akira Kurosawa film Ikiru. Set in 1953 London, it stars Bill Nighy as a bureaucrat in the public works department who learns he has a fatal illness.
All five stories have unreliable male narrators, who are musicians of some kind, and are written in the first person.
She cannot actually play the instrument at all. So convinced was she of her own musical genius, no teacher ever seemed equal to it, and so rather than tarnish her gift with imperfection, she chose never to realise it at all.
Closing the book, it's hard to recall much more than an atmosphere or an air; a few bars of music, half-heard, technically accomplished, quickly forgotten.
Ultimately this is a lovely, clever book about the passage of time and the soaring notes that make its journey worthwhile.