The Buried Giant (2015) By Kazuo Ishiguro

 

The Buried Giant is a book of mythology set in the years after what could be the ultimate mythology: King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable.  The story has mists, ogres, a dragon, a young boy who has been bitten by the dragon, a warrior hero, and King Arthur’s nephew, Sir Gawain.  What it doesn’t have is a giant, at least not in the generally known sense.

The novel, a fun read, is the creation of Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature.  He's better known to the public as the author of The Remains of the Day, which is better known as a movie starring Anthony Hopkins.  He’s a versatile author, to say the least.

On two levels the plot deals with memory, addressing the question: Is it better to protect oneself by burying bad memories, nightmares that include tragedy, or to remember these things and try to learn from them?  This is not as easy of a question as you might think.

The story begins in a cave-dwelling village of the Britons where none of the residents have a memory more than a day long.  Living there is an elderly couple who are beginning to have short, unexplained dreams harking back to earlier times.  One such dream is of a son who moved away from the village.  Another dream entails a test of love that a ferryman administers before he will row couples across a river together.  After discussing these dreams with each other Axl and his wife Beatrice, who is not in good health, decide to try and find their son, setting off on an adventure filled trip.

Along the way they come across a village which has just been attacked by ogres.  There is also another traveler in the village, a Saxon warrior.  He leads a small band, including a young orphan boy, out to hunt down the ogre. They find and destroy it, but during the fight the young boy is injured by a dragon that has been dormant for many years.  The villagers fear the boy, having been so “marked” by the dragon, will cause it to return. 

When Axl and Beatrice leave the village the next morning to continue their trip the warrior and the boy will accompany them part of the way, before going their own way.  Along the route they will encounter Sir Gawain.  In full Knight regalia, Gawain is the nephew of the late King Arthur.  Piecing bits of learned knowledge together, it becomes clear that the memory loss is caused by a mist in the land, and that the mist is the breath of the dragon.  The only way to end it is to slay the dragon. While both the warrior and Sir Gawain vow to do so, they each have ulterior missions.

What they do not acknowledge is the role played by none other than Merlin, King Arthur’s magician.  Merlin had conjured up the dragon & its mist-breath to make the warring Britons and Saxons of Arthur’s time forget their past hostilities toward each other, putting an end to their wars of revenge.  That the people forget everything, not just the wars, was an accidental byproduct of the curse. 

What the warrior figures out is that Sir Gawain’s actual quest is to protect the dragon, not kill it – thereby forever maintaining the peace.  The warrior on the other hand, has been sent undercover by the Saxon King to the East (outside of the range of the memory loss aspect of the mist) to kill the dragon, and scout the Briton’s territory in advance of a second Saxon invasion.  To slay the dragon, the warrior must first destroy Sir Gawain.  He will do both.

As Axl and Beatrice continue on their way, and the mist clears, their personal memories will return. Near the journey’s end they will remember that their son had gone to an island, and to get to it they must cross a river.  When they encounter the ferryman that Beatrice has dreamt of, they submit to his test.  

With memories intact, Axl will pass the test, Beatrice will not.  And, with the dragon slain, the Saxons are free to resume their conquest.

This not particularly happy ending however, leaves the question unanswered:  Are Axl and Beatrice better off having remembered their past?  Is the conjured loss of memory the only way for King Arthur’s peace to survive?  Is anyone better off for having slain the dragon, waking the buried giant of memories?

Recommendation:  Clearly in writing the above I have shamelessly violated spoiler alerts. Nevertheless, The Buried Giant is still a fun read.