When We Were Orphans [Paperback]

When the novel opens in 1930, Christopher Banks has become a renowned private detective in London. His first person narration begins innocently enough, with a classically correct, ¡¥realistic¡ fashion:

It was the summer of 1923, the summer I came down from Cambridge, when despite my aunt¡s wishes that I return to Shropshire, I decided my future lay in the capital and took up a small flat at Number 14b Bedford Gardens in Kensington.

This opening echoes that of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle¡s A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story: ¡§In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London ¡K¡, and both narratives similarly give an impression of rational, orderly narrative to the readers, fitting for a detective novel. Indeed, our principal character Banks has mentioned reading about the ¡§foggy streets of the Conan Doyle mysteries¡. Banks¡s account is not unlike that of Dr. Watson, with a matter-of-fact style, and complete with the most ¡¥correct¡ English attitude.

¡§I¡d like to oblige you, Miss Hemmings. But unfortunately I¡ve already replied to the organisers some days ago. I fear it¡ll be rather late to inform them of my wish to bring a guest ¡K¡

Such a storytelling manner makes prominent Christopher Banks¡s ¡¥Englishness¡ ¡V a theme which is inevitably linked with the questions of identity and sense of belonging. In this quotation Banks is rejecting an unreasonable request put forward by Sarah Hemmings, an ambitious woman who aspires to join the upper class. In the course of the events they will become familiar and even intimate with each other. Sarah is to become a catalyst in prompting Banks to recall his childhood.

Banks¡s father, who works for a British company involved in the opium business, disappears when he is nine, and foul play is suspected. The young Banks and his Japanese friend, Akira, stage the missing father adventure time and time again in their role-playing games. However, Banks does not reveal too much about his feelings towards the supposed kidnapping of his father. ¡§I do not remember much about the days immediately following my father¡s disappearance¡, so he says. This nicely illustrates a continuous deliberate suppression of emotion in Banks¡s narrative. His true emotions are more subtly hinted at, or sometimes through the discrepancies between Banks¡s words and other characters¡ accounts of certain events. This gives rise to doubts about Banks¡s reliability as a narrator. After all, human memory is fallible, and this factor, coupled with a narrator who may have a tendency to distort his memories, readers are presented with the sometimes difficult but stimulating task of answering the question, what has really happened?

What happens after the disappearance of the father is certain ¡V his mother, a social activist against opium trade, also unaccountably disappears, apparently having been kidnapped. This shatters the boyish Banks¡s hope of living in Shanghai forever and he is sent to England, his ¡¥home¡, to stay with an aunt. His eventual return to Shanghai is at least partially prompted by, again, Sarah, who is to accompany her elderly statesman husband to Shanghai, which leads to the question of whether Banks is in love with her or not.

Flipping back to page one at this moment, one will find that such a ¡¥normal¡ opening has done nothing to prepare unwary readers for the developments in this later part of the story, beginning with Part Four ¡§Cathay Hotel, Shanghai, 20th September 1937¡. Without warning the world of reality, where reason inhabits, collapses. Very often the situation is incredulous or even outright ridiculous. Readers need to confront a different Banks here: his ¡¥logic¡ is so peculiar that there are moments when he seems to be on the verge of insanity. Hardly anyone doubts Banks¡s ability to rescue his parents, who are still believed to be in captivity somewhere in Shanghai, after almost a quarter of a century. Needless to say, Banks does not question the possibility of a satisfying conclusion. When his investigation brings him outside the International Settlement into the war-torn Shanghai, he rescues ¡¥Akira¡, but again, it is dubious whether that Japanese soldier is really Akira. It is near the end of his adventures in Shanghai that reasons seem to resuscitate and an appalling truth is revealed.

This change from ¡¥normal¡ to ¡¥abnormal¡ is exactly the most brilliant point about this novel. The transition is so smooth that one can¡t find the joints, rather like a successful surgery that leaves no scar. This shift should come as a great surprise to readers. Some may at first find this uncomfortable, especially for those who are expecting to see a cool Sherlock Holmes at work, and Ishiguro does raise such expectations in the ¡¥realistic¡ first part. Nevertheless the ¡¥absurd¡ part opens up possibility for readers to think about the way memory works, and readers are presented the psychological burden of a person with a traumatic childhood ¡V in the poignant closing paragraph Banks realizes that it is the fate of orphans to ¡§chas[e] through long years the shadows of vanished parents¡.

Overtly a detective story, When We Were Orphans is above all a psychological journey of a character who courageously confronts his past. With an ingenious plot and memorable characters, this is a novel of memory par excellence.

The plot was thin, perhaps because it was stretched over too long a book. Until the last tape the pace was too slow for a mystery. A few leaps backward and forward in time are acceptable but he made so many it became a bit difficult to follow the story line. Worse, he sometimes jumped from "A" to "C" in situations without going through "B," or even referring to it in "C" so we knew how he got to "C." An example of this was his acceptance of, and seeming agreement with, the assumption of the city councilman, his old schoolmate Morgan, and the Chinese family in his old home, that Christopher's parents were not only alive but still being held prisoner in Shanghi. We were not told about anything Christopher had discovered either in London or after arriving in Shanghi that would have justified that assumption.

In fact, we were not told about anything he had discovered in England that would indicate he had reason to believe his parents were still in Shanghi or even still alive. Yet there is an implication that he had discovered something, some lead or information that might make a trip to Shanghi worthwhile.

The great buzz that his arrival in Shanghi created and his VIP treatment was not believable. Even if he were a British detective of Sherlock Holmes' stature there would not be any reason for people living in Shanghi to be so impressed by him or to be so interested in his case---especially since the case was a personal one involving his parents. With the civil war raging around them and the Japanese invaders possibly about to seize Shanghi it was ridiculous to have some of the residents saying that they thought he could help with that situation.

A couple incidents of chance meetings would be believable because they do happen in real life. However, there are more than a lifetime of lucky chance meetings in this book. Finding the old Chinese detective through Morgan's recollection of him as a street bum, finding his childhood Japanese friend as a wounded Japanese soldier who will again act out the rescue of Christopher's parents, and finding the house of the old blind man through the driver Sara provided were all a bit too much. That last one especially because the driver was described as young, maybe even 15 years old, but he remembered the old blind actor from decades before and even knew where he lived. Unbelievable.

Also, the 1916 kidnapping incident he asked the former Chinese detective about (to locate the house where his parents might be held) would have been long before his parents were kidnapped. The probability that they were held in the same house from the time they were kidnapped until Christopher was a grown man with an international reputation (several decades?) was too small to make that whole part of his quest a logical course of action.

Even before he met them, the Chinese family living in his old home had apparently accepted that they would have to give it to because it had been his family home, even though the British company rather than his family owned it. Not believable.

This man who derided the foreigners in China for the way they treated the Chinese (They had no sense of shame about it.) berated and browbeat his Chinese driver and the Chinese lieutenant, both of whom risked their lives to help him find the house he wanted to locate. That destroyed much of my sympathy for him.

The Chinese lieutenant would not be likely to know about or care about Christopher's case and would be extremely unlikely to desert his post to lead Christopher to a house near or even behind the Japanese lines. Similarly, although he was supposed to be dedicated to finding his parents, Christopher quickly decided to run off with to Macau with another man's wife (shame?) but then just as quickly abandoned her at the waterfront (more shame?), along with the possessions he had selected as important enough to fit in the one suitcase she allowed him, so he could run off to find the house where he though his parents were still prisoners after several decades.

Having found the house he had risked his life, and the lives of others, to find, the great detective then spent time examining a wounded dog rather than quickly searching the house for his parents. There certainly are such dysfunctional people in real life but there are an unbelievable number of them in this book.

The warlord, Wang Po, was described as having taken Christopher's mother away "in the dead of the night." But we were previously told that she was kidnapped while Uncle Philip took him to the market during the day. How did Christopher learn about "Diana Roberts," the European woman who was being held in a missionary home for the aged in Hong Kong?

Did anybody edit this book? Did anybody check it for plot continuity and agreement?