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Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall (Vintage International)
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About Nocturnes: Five Stories Of Music And Nightfall
Product Description 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. Review "Expressive and harmonic, delicate yet substantive. . . . [A] true virtuoso performance."-- Christian Science Monitor "In both craft and substance Nocturnes reveals a master at work."-- Seattle Times "Immaculate."-- Los Angeles Times "Ishiguro is, as always, a master of style and tone . . . . [ Nocturnes] build[s] into a melancholic soundtrack. We're helpless to do anything but listen."-- Time Out New York "Tight and assured. . . . Suffused with sympathy." - -Time “These stories recall Ishiguro's best known novel, The Remains of the Day. . . . By now it is clear that this exquisite stylist is serious in his pursuit of a minimal - perhaps even universal - mode of expression for the emotional experiences that define our lives as human.”— The Times, London “Superb . . . a deceptively plain and easy style that rides on the surfaces of manners and decorous behavior.”— Providence Journal "A brilliant new book . . . art, its dangers, its pains and its gaiety [are] all topics seriously considered in this accomplished book."- Frank Kermode, London Review of Books "Ishiguro blends musical concepts with their literary counterparts in his latest work, and Nocturnes has the . . . quality of a song cycle with recurring themes and motifs developed in different prose keys."-- Bookmarks magazine About the Author Kazuo Ishiguro is the 2017 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. His work has been translated into more than 40 languages. Both The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go have sold more than 1 million copies, and both were adapted into highly acclaimed films. Ishiguro's other work includes The Buried Giant, Nocturnes, A Pale View of the Hills, and An Artist of the Floating World. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Crooner Chapter 1 The morning i spotted Tony Gardner sitting among the tourists, spring was just arriving here in Venice. We’d completed our first full week outside in the piazza—a relief, let me tell you, after all those stuffy hours performing from the back of the cafe, getting in the way of customers wanting to use the staircase. There was quite a breeze that morning, and our brand-new marquee was flapping all around us, but we were all feeling a little bit brighter and fresher, and I guess it showed in our music. But here I am talking like I’m a regular band member. Actually, I’m one of the “gypsies,” as the other musicians call us, one of the guys who move around the piazza, helping out whichever of the three cafe orchestras needs us. Mostly I play here at the Caffè Lavena, but on a busy afternoon, I might do a set with the Quadri boys, go over to the Florian, then back across the square to the Lavena. I get on fine with them all—and with the waiters too—and in any other city I’d have a regular position by now. But in this place, so obsessed with tradition and the past, everything’s upside down. Anywhere else, being a guitar player would go in a guy’s favour. But here? A guitar! The cafe managers get uneasy. It looks too modern, the tourists won’t like it. Last autumn I got myself a vinta
