Dancing in the Dark covers the late adolescent years, so it's a well mined area of confessional literature by the likes of the wonderful Caitlin Moran (yes I think she is very good, for some of the same reasons I think Karl Ove is, and anyone who can't get along with Caitlin isn't going to get along with Karl Ove). Once again Karl Ove communicates the utter intensity of the ordinary, as well as the white hot intensity of the sexual obsession, for almost every adolescent boy, complicated by his instant premature ejaculation whenever he gets anywhere near his goal. There is one amazing fact about Karl Ove, and it can't be unconnected with his sexual problem: he says he never masturbated, ever. This is really really fucking weird - given his openness about everything else I guess it's true. It's easier to read about Caitlin Moran, gaily fumbling along from orgasm to orgasm, than poor old Karl Ove - he never made it easy for himself.
Then when I'd finished, hurried though Dancing in the Dark, to get to read Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant, but then I felt this strange reluctance - supposing it wasn't up to the standard of all his previous novels, suppose the mood isn;t quite right? It was a strange feeling, but the book itself, its deep grey green cover (is it grey green? I can't remember), its black tinged pages, its weight, the thick feel of bound pages gave me this comforting sense that it would be alright. Why I don't know. It is a terrific book - need to say that right from the start - I am a fan of Kazuo Ishiguro anyway, but this is really good. It got mealy mouthed reviews from the likes of The New Yorker Magazine, among others,people who just don't get it, people who cannot, it seems, let their imagination soar as Ishiguro does.
His prose is still, well, how do you describe it? - clear and ordinary but cumulatively devastating in its impact and emotional payload. Here he does allow himself some lovely forays into a slightly stilted "heightened" language, especially in the characters' speech. In the end it's an almost unbearably poignant love story, set in the context of War and Peace, and what they do to us, with all the power and depth combined with ambiguity that he is such a master stylist of. And he's yet another nail in the coffin of those who want to pigeonhole fantasy, science fiction, or any other genre, and say you can't produce literature using the tropes of any of those.
