A PALE VIEW OF HILLS

In his best-known book, THE REMAINS OF THE DAY, Kazuo Ishiguro advances the butler's story, not by giving, but by withholding both information and emotion. This novel is about a woman who lived in Nagasaki after the bomb was dropped. We don't hear the explosion. We don't even hear the names of the dead. And yet it's very clear that something perfectly wretched has gone on. Is still going on. Roe Kendall dramatizes so well that, after a while, I forgot to wonder why an English woman of breeding would be telling the story. Still, this throws one more curtain between the listener and the tragedy. Couldn't they have found somebody Japanese? B.H.C. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC/JAN 01]