SOURCE: Brooke Allen, "Leaving Behind Daydreams for Nightmares," in The Wall Street Journal, October 11, 1995, p. 12.

In the following review of The Unconsoled, Allen argues that while Ishiguro has chosen a new writing style, his subject matter remains the same.

Six years ago, at the age of 35, Kazuo Ishiguro came to international attention as the author of The Remains of the Day, an elegant novel that won the 1989 Booker Prize and was made into a film by Merchant and Ivory. In The Remains of the Day Mr. Ishiguro trod territory that he had already explored in his first two novels. A Pale View of Hills (1982) and An Artist of the Floating World (1986). The narrator was once again an elderly person—in this case an English butler—looking back upon a life of meaningless ritual, missed opportunities, failed love. It established Mr. Ishiguro as a realistic artist, who wrote traditional...