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Title details for Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro - Wait list

Nocturnes

Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

by Kazuo Ishiguro
Mark Bramhall
Audiobook
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Wait time: About 6 weeks
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0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 6 weeks

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day comes an inspired sequence of stories as affecting as it is beautiful.  
 
With the clarity and precision that have become his trademarks, Kazuo Ishiguro interlocks five short pieces of fiction to create a world that resonates with emotion, heartbreak, and humor. Here is a fragile, once famous singer, turning his back on the one thing he loves; a music junky with little else to offer his friends but opinion; a songwriter who inadvertently breaks up a marriage; a jazz musician who thinks the answer to his career lies in changing his physical appearance; and a young cellist whose tutor has devised a remarkable way to foster his talent. For each, music is a central part of their lives and, in one way or another, delivers them to an epiphany.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    September 22, 2009

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781415965467
      • File size: 191936 KB
      • Duration: 06:39:51

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Each of the stories in Kazuo Ishiguro's first collection is told by a musician, and each explores the theme of music's idealism and life's harsh reality. This production uses four narrators to great effect: Mark Bramhall reads the first and last stories, deftly moving between the Eastern European and American accents of the characters. Kirby Heyborne's youthful voice is ideal for "Malvern Hills," which is told by a young guitarist-songwriter hoping to make it in London. The masterful Simon Vance shows again that he one of the best at moving into the register of female voices, while Lincoln Hoppe's languid delivery captures the humor of the title story without letting it slide into absurdity. This collection is brilliantly arranged, like a symphony in five movements. D.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 27, 2009
      This suite of five stories hits all of Ishiguro's signature notes, but the shorter form mutes their impact. In “Crooner,” Tony Gardner, a washed-up American singer, goes sloshing through the canals of Venice to serenade his trophy wife, Lindy. The narrator, Jan, is a hired guitar player whose mother was a huge fan of Tony, but Jan's experience playing for Tony fractures his romantic ideals. Lindy returns in the title story, which finds her in a luxury hotel reserved for celebrity patients recovering from cosmetic surgery. The narrator this time is Steve, a saxophonist who could never get a break because of his “loser ugly” looks. Lindy idly strikes up a friendship with Steve as they wait for their bandages to come off and their new lives to begin. In the final story, “Cellists,” an unnamed saxophonist narrator who, like Jan, plays in Venice's San Marco square, observes the evolving relationship of a Hungarian cello prodigy after he meets an American woman. The stories are superbly crafted, though they lack the gravity of Ishiguro's longer works (Never Let Me Go
      ; Remains of the Day
      ), which may leave readers anticipating a crescendo that never hits.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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