This post is part of my series on Kazuo Ishiguro. This post does not yet have notes from the Harry Ransom Center.

I have yet to meet anyone who actually likes this book. I have a few friends who have also read all of Ishiguro’s books, and we’ve compared our ranked lists before. It was actually pretty variable with a lot of permutations in the top half of our lists. But the one constant? When We Were Orphans was dead last for all of us.

I remember reading this and just really wanting to like it more than I actually did. I had only read Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day before this, so I was sort of looking for every reason I could to place this book on another pedestal.

And yeah, if you look, the similarities are there to the other Ishiguro books I love so much. Christopher is a tragic character who paints these fantasies to hide the pain of the loss of his parents. We can read between the lines and see how he is being mocked by others, even if he doesn’t recognize that. And there’s also that turning point where he almost leaves with Sarah, letting go of these fantasies—but no, like all Ishiguro protagonists, the chance for redemption is lost.

So on paper, this is the type of book I should love. And I did love the premise once I understood what exactly was going on. But the actual process of reading the book was excruciating. All of Ishiguro’s books are slow (and I enjoy that!), but this was just too slow and meandering without enough payoff. I also felt kind of weird with the revelation of what happened to his parents—it was probably supposed to be jarring, but it just felt sort of cheap to me.