Book Review: The Buried Giant

Aug 25, 2024

Rating:😭

The Buried Giant is a Fairy Tale about the value of living memory, the limits of devotion, the contradictions of revenge, and the stories we tell ourselves to feel better about the world. It is equal parts beautiful and devastating, and its author Kazuo Ishiguro is a brilliant, merciless craftsman.

Axl and Beatrice live in a small community embedded in an English hilltop. An ambient cruelty hovers all around, seemingly related to the collective inability to recall the past. Everyone forgets pretty much everything that happens, even significant events from a few minutes ago.

Axl and Beatrice, being old, are affected less by this mist of forgetfulness than the young. They show each other warm tenderness despite their harsh environment. Lack of detailed memories from their decades together doesn’t affect their confidence in their love for one another.

One day, they set off to visit their son in a neighboring town, and end up on a heroic, dark and winding journey, full of knights and monks and ogres and dragons, discovering the cause of the forgetfulness and changing the world forever.

After a series of books (The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, Enlightenment Now) that I could not finish due to a combination of length, density and mental distraction from a recent move, I tore through The Buried Giant in a few days. My Mom reminded me of its existence during a recent visit. I went from thinking I’d never heard of it to distant memories of having loved it. It was strange to reread this book that has memory at its center, but remembering so little about it myself.

There are massive spoilers from here on! I highly recommend reading this book without spoilers!

…

To live with dying
Oh, wouldn’t you see our world as dark?
But I won’t spend time
Rеsenting the way things are

- Sweet Time, Porter Robinson

How do humans live knowing of a terrible past or an imminently awful future? Would it be better to forget about what was and what’s coming? Even without the mist from a dying dragon, how do we justify to ourselves the pain that we’ve caused and the inevitable decline and death in our future?

There are no true heroes in this story. Everyone is noble and skilled in their own way, but also remarkably complex and human. Ishiguro is a master of show, don’t tell. Doubt, fear, spite, self-deception, and pettiness is interleaved with individually heroic acts. Even the bad stuff - spurring a horse sharply, making a child promise to hate, and unleashing a terrible war - all has reasonable justification and relatable roots.

Characters use the forgetful mist to their own psychological benefit throughout the story. Sir Gawain repeatedly downplays his misdeeds: his role in the slaughter of Saxons during Arthur’s crusade, turning the warrior over to the corrupt Abbot, even seeming to forget that he is Querig’s protector and his quest to slay her is a farce. In fits of indignity, he vocally reaffirms himself as gallant and true. Often times he is, in fact, very knightly, rescuing and helping Axl and Beatrice on multiple occassions. Much like his armor that simultaneously weighs him down and seems to physically hold him together, his warped memory and self-perception is a necessary burden to mentally forge on.

Wistan the Warrior bursts into the story, rescuing a town from fiends and returning a kidnapped child. He goes on to put that same boy on a leash and use him to start what sounds like it will be a terrible, decades long revenge genocide. His character, full of hate for what was done to him and his people by the Britons, makes it impossible not to think this is a book about current events.

We must hope God yet finds a way to preserve the bonds between our peoples, yet custom and suspicion have always divided us. Who knows what will come when quick-tongued men make ancient grievances rhyme with fresh desire for land and conquest?
The giant, once well buried, now stirs. When soon he rises, as surely he will, the friendly bonds between us will prove as knots young girls make with the stems of small flowers.

Axl was told by Jonas that Beatrice had an incurable illness, but fully misremembered it as him confirming her road to recovery. He is a master of diplomacy, but limited in his own power. Despite his failings, I think he is the closest thing to this story’s hero.

Axl and Beatrice’s story parallels Orpheus and Eurydice’s myth:

Hades tells Orpheus that he can take Euridyce back with him, under one condition: she must follow behind him as they emerge from the Underworld, and he must not turn to look at her.
Overjoyed at being set this simple task, Orpheus thanks the gods and begins his ascent. But, unable to hear Eurydice’s footsteps, he starts to fear that Hades has fooled him. As he nears the exit from the Underworld, he turns to see Eurydice behind him, and she is trapped forever.

In The Buried Giant, Axl walks behind Beatrice to shield her. She calls to him, “Are you still there Axl?” to which he always replies “Still here, Princess”. But Axl makes a mistake - a hurtful one, but a common enough one in the world of human emotions - and in the end, they are separated forever.

I thought a lot about why Axl and Beatrice aren’t allowed to cross and walk the island together at the end, and my most hopeful interpretation is that no matter the level of lifetime devotion, we all die alone. The story of walking an island forever with your beloved is a myth.

The alternative interpretation is that Axl preventing them from visiting their son’s grave is what dooms him and Beatrice to an eternity of loneliness, and that is just too cruel. There is no deep relationship without moments of selfishness and pettiness, and Axl fully came around in the end, initiating the final trip to see their son.

I’ll end on a positive note from another book I love. Dalinar’s journey in Oathbringer is about learning to take responsibility for his actions. To recognize growth, change, and improvement despite the cruelness of the world and the temptation to justify away the hard stuff.

Odium stepped back. “Dalinar? What is this?”
“You cannot have my pain.”
“Dalinar—”
Dalinar forced himself to his feet. “You. Cannot. Have. My. Pain.”
“Be sensible.”
“I killed those children,” Dalinar said.
“No, it—”
“I burned the people of Rathalas.”
“I was there, influencing you—”
“YOU CANNOT HAVE MY PAIN!” Dalinar bellowed, stepping toward Odium. The god frowned. His Fused companions shied back, and Amaram raised a hand before his eyes and squinted.
Were those gloryspren spinning around Dalinar?
“I did kill the people of Rathalas,” Dalinar shouted. “You might have been there, but I made the choice. I decided!” He stilled. “I killed her. It hurts so much, but I did it. I accept that. You cannot have her. You cannot take her from me again.”
“Dalinar,” Odium said. “What do you hope to gain, keeping this burden?”
Dalinar sneered at the god. “If I pretend… If I pretend I didn’t do those things, it means that I can’t have grown to become someone else.”
“A failure.”
Something stirred inside of Dalinar. A warmth that he had known once before. A warm, calming light.
Unite them.
“Journey before destination,” Dalinar said. “It cannot be a journey if it doesn’t have a beginning.”
A thunderclap sounded in his mind. Suddenly, awareness poured back into him. The Stormfather, distant, feeling frightened—but also surprised.
Dalinar?
“I will take responsibility for what I have done,” Dalinar whispered. “If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man.”