"A tourist strolling across the square will hear one tune fade out, another fade in, like he's shifting the dial on a radio."
I've loved Ishiguro (a Nobel laureate now) since I read him for my Modern English Literature class back in college. That was "The Artist of a Floating World" and it was such a beautiful piece of writing that I simply feel in love with. That does not always happen with assigned reading, let me tell you. So, I knew even then that I would be reading more of him in the future.
'Nocturnes' are actually five stories, connected only through music, which plays a part in each of them, making it almost a character. It's in the background, a memory, a sound you faintly hear or the ddriving force of the story.
In 'Crooner' we see a couple listening to street musicians in Venice. The man used to be popular and the musician playing to them was a fan through his mother. The crooner wants to surprise his wife by singing to her from a gondola outside her hotel window. Things don't turn out as romantic as they seemed.
"Why should they? Just some crooner from a bygone era."
'Come Rain or Come Shine' tells the story of Raymond, a teacher disillusioned with his career, who decides to spend his summer holiday with friends in London. His welcome isn't as warm as he'd hoped because the friends are fighting and he's left with Emily as Charlie goes on a business trip and asks him to smooth things over in his absence. The link with music here are the records Ray and Emily used to listen to when they were in college.
"We're as bad as one another. We should count ourselves lucky. But we never seem to be contented."
Hoping not to run into anyone who might inquire about how seeking fame and fortune was going, the protagonist wanders through Camden Town in 'Malvern Hills'. A musician tired of endless auditions that see to be going nowhere, he comes to spend some down time with his sister. There he meets a couple, Sonja and Tom, who are professional musicians, playing traditional Swiss music at tourist spots. He plays them a song they like and through chatting, he seed how the husband is optimistic and the wife, though a pessimist at first sight, seemed to just have a realistic outlook.
"When I was younger nothing could make me angry. But now I get angry at many things."
The titular 'Nocturnes' tells a story of a jazz musician, Steve, who is persuaded to have cosmetic surgery in order to jump-start his career. After being molded by a famous surgeon he is sequestered in a room at a Beverly Hills hotel where his neighbor is an actress - Lindy Gardner, recently divorced from Toy Gardner. The two have an escapade and talk about talent and hard work and who it is that deserves accolades.
Finally, 'Cellist' tells the story of a young Hungarian musician who meets an American woman while playing on a piazza in Italy. Disillusioned with the trajectory of his career after studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London and spending two year sunder the tutelage of master Oleg Petrovic in Vienna, he is charmed when she tells him she sees potential for greatness in him and her suggestions make his playing much better. But when truths are revealed, things don't turn out as he'd hoped.
"I haven't been able to get it out of my heart."
"How the bosom palls of today become lost strangers of tomorrow, scattered across Europe, playing the Godfather theme or Autumn Leaves in squares and cafes you'll never visit."
The common thread of all the stories is, well... heartbreak. All these musicians are disillusioned with their craft, or the way their life turned out, the way life works... They've been hurt by others but also by their own choices. And music is there as a constant... both a healing salve and a sharp thorn.
