When We Were Orphans

By: Kazuo Ishiguro

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

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 wont, 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.

©2000 Kazuo Ishiguro (P)2000 Books on Tape, Inc. and HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Critic reviews

"John Lee conveys both Banks' intelligence and his uneasy depths in this fine performance, which far surpasses the print version as a reading experience." ( AudioFile)

"Goes much further than even The Remains of the Day in its examination of the roles we've had handed to us... His fullest achievement yet." ( The New York Times Book Review)

"With his characteristic finesse, Mr. Ishiguro infuses what seems like a classic adventure story with an ineffable tinge of strangeness." ( The Wall Street Journal)

Not done with book but hilarious split fiasco

I like to listen to books in parts - sometimes I switch back and forth between books at breaks. This book has the most incredibly lacking break point I have experienced - quote - "I pressed the button for the lift and while I stood waiting, Grayson continued to hover. I had actually turned away from him to face the doors when I heard him say "AUDIBLE HOPES YOU HAVE ENJOYED THIS PROGRAM"

Contrived

I love this authors writing but boy did he ever miss it with this one. In any event, I did did nothing for me.

Just short of 5 stars

This was a thoroughly enjoyable read...whatever is the equivalent of a "page turner" in audibooks. Part of the pleasure comes from the way the narrator, Christopher Banks, looks back on his life and tries to piece together his faded memories. The way that Ishiguro writes this is what makes it so enjoyable. The book is full of colorful recollections of a childhood in Shanghai, as well as a series of adventures as Banks returns as an adult to try to discover how and why his parents had disappeared (thereby making him an orphan) when he was a young child in Shanghai. He undertakes his quest just as the Japanese are invading Shanghai in the late 1930's and parts of the city are war zones with terrible destruction and danger. His insistence on endangering not only himself, but everyone who offers him assistance, sometimes struck me as implausible. Perhaps, I am missing an obvious point being made about the protagonist, but this was the one shortcoming of the novel and the reason I gave it 4 stars, rather than 5. It's really a terrific book to listen to, and the narration is superb. Highly recommended.

Entertaining but unrealistic

This is a mystery/suspense tale set in the mid-20th century between London and Shanghai. The settings are interesting, and the second world war scenes in Shanghai are dramatic. However, the premise of the novel centers on a well-known London detective trying to find his parents who "disappeared" in Shanghai 25 yrs in the past under mysterious circumstances , and in the midst of the 2nd world war he is trying to find their whereabouts.I don't feel that the "orphan" motif is well exploited although it appears in several ways throughout the story. The implausibility of the story makes it hard to recommend to others. Narration by John Lee, as usual, was excellent

True Detective

Love Ishiguro. He takes on the detective story head on, looking at it through his typical themes of frustrated sexuality and the intertwinement with politics and class, always subtle except in a few harsh moments when truth blazes through and we want to look away.

Some plot twists seem improble, even contrived, but in the mode of the grand literary tradition we are meant to take these as keys to understanding how great forces intersect. I think it works, but just barely.

Christopher Banks is sent back to Britain from his life growing up in Shanghai, after his parents disappear mysteriously due to an encounter with a rich Chinese figure in connection with their struggle against the opium trade which is, of course, paying their income indirectly. He sets out to become a detective, succeeds, meets a young woman who is also an orphan, but doesn't make a match with her. He then goes back to Shanghai to at last search for his parents and meets her again where she is in an unhappy marriage. The improbable overwhelms the obvious, and he learns about his parents. There - enough said.

Don't read it for the plot, read it for the characters, and the brilliant presentation of the relation between childhood and adulthood. As such it is as good a piece of detective work as the other Ishiguro works I've read or seen: Remains of the Day and Never let me Go.

Dream-like and somewhat surreal

A dream-like and somewhat surreal narrative of an English orphan’s search for his parents and his misty almost-romance with a strange girl he met in London and later encountered again in Shanghai.

This is the story of Christopher Banks, born the son of English parents in early twentieth-century Shanghai. Both his parents disappeared within a few weeks of each other when he was nine, but twenty years later he remains convinced that they are still alive.

At the time of his parents’ disappearance, young Christopher was very impressed with the Chinese detective who was supposed to be working on the case and was convinced that this man would find them in short order. He and his best friend at the time, a Japanese boy living in the same neighborhood in the international quarter, spent a lot of their time playing detective at that point.

After being sent back to England, Christopher was determined to become a detective himself, a goal he actually achieved. After about twenty years in this profession, he decides to return to Shanghai to finally solve the mystery of his parents’ supposed kidnapping.

We don’t learn a lot about Christopher’s methods of detecting. He does interview a few people there in Shanghai, mostly government officials who he feels are obstructing the investigation. There is a sort of surreal period when all the British and international set seems to be convinced that he will actually retrieve his parents alive and insist on congratulating him and honoring him with dinners etc. before he has even done anything.

Meanwhile, it is 1938, and the Japanese are invading the city, but the members of the international community seem to be convinced that this has very little to do with them.

The most useful tool in Christopher’s investigation seems to be his own memory, now rather hazy, of what happened at the time. An interview with the Chinese detective who he had admired so much as a boy ultimately leads him on a dangerous journey through one of the war zones. This journey has pretty much no positive results. One of the officials who had previously been obstructing his investigation finally puts him in touch with the person who can actually tell him what happened. It is neither the happy ending he seems to have expected nor quite as bad as it might have been.

Very very long

Seemed like it should move along but kept getting bogged down with who knows what

beautiful writing, but

I guess you could say this was a slice of life. However, this story did not live up 2 this man's fine Talent.

Review

It really picked up at the end, but kind of dragged in the beginning. It took awhile for me to get into the story line.

It will haunt me forever

Quite gripping and disturbing novel. I wasn't able to put it down...or turn it off, as it were. A remarkable book and the narration splendid. It will haunt me.