The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

Two months! Two of them. It took me two months of picking at The Buried Giant to finish it. I'm not sure what's more amazing: that I stuck with it for two months or that the story line stayed with me over that length of time.

It's a beautifully written piece of literature. Ishiguro has a way with language. His descriptions or rich with interwoven metaphor. The characters are distinct and well-voiced. The plot is interesting with a central mystery that propels the story (just not very quickly).

So why did it take me so long? Partly, it was that the language was so beautiful that I had to slow down to absorb it. Mostly, it was that most of the characters are so...old. Three of the characters are around 70 or 80. So full of action this is not. Much of the plot is tied up with the characters being introspective and trying to remember things as they plod around the British countryside. Everyone's forgetting things because of some mysterious curse.  So yeah, a slow read. A good one though.

I'm still struggling with it honestly.  There's a lot going on in the text below the surface events.