'The Buried Giant' is best approached like you would a painting. Everything about it screams 'painting'. Seriously, every descriptive passage is like something discerned through a fog that's intentionally painted in. And I'll be honest: I can almost see an animated movie being made out of it, in the style of The Illusionist.
Fairy Tales written in the 21st century are quite similar to those written in any other, with two exceptions: 1) authors are aware that they are writing fairy tales, 2) authors often take their fairy tales as seriously as they would their tax forms and 3) authors want to be very blunt about what the fairy tales are really about but they can't because our society does not like it when people are blunt about something. They don't consider it respectable because they either can't write academic papers about it, or, because they can't feel good about the fact that they've figured stuff out for themselves.
It's an interesting topic, though: why should well written allegory be considered 'preachy'? I mean, everything's preachy. Some would argue that the entire point of literature is to be preachy, that there is nothing called 'non-didactic' literature. When you sit down to write a poem, why exactly do you do it? That's a million dollar question, ladies and gentlemen; it's whats kept the greatest thinkers of our time working on their theories.
But it's still possible to pin down a few theories which make sense.
You write about something because something's bothering you. Since you can't do anything about it, you write it down because the process is often therapeutic, and gives you a better idea of what it is that is bothering you. Much like you would talk to a friend about it who wouldn't judge you, but just hear you out, and maybe advice you. But sometimes, advice isn't the point. Sometimes talking just makes you feel relieved, because if the problem isn't big enough to cause a huge ruckus if it's shared, it's probably not big enough to destroy your world either. So what was complicated is rendered less complicated, and more streamlined. All by talking about it.
But perhaps it's a symptom of a larger problem, and fixating on that larger problem would be counter productive to your struggles. You want to get to a state where you feel better about something quite serious, but which you can't change yourself because it's a symptom of something much larger beyond your power. However, if you're comfortable enough about it to want to write it down, you're comfortable enough about it to keep it complicated, instead of streamlining it. Perhaps make it even more complicated, because when you're writing something down, you're filling all of those gaps in your head which are self evidently contextual with context artificially.
Sometimes, what bothers you is a direct result of a historical process. Then, you have to complicate it, because those in power would always try to reduce it to something irrelevant to the bigger problem at hand. Simplifying is ultimately an act of power. The only way to wrest power away is to go the other direction: that is, to complicate.
Which is why fantasy and science fiction draws such a lot of flak. It simplifies while claiming to be engaging in serious conversation with the political world at large.
However, there is a flaw to this logic.
The symbols of science fiction and fantasy are age old. Yes, even something like robots have existed since time immemorial in human consciousness. They are archetypes which are inexhaustible because they can mean different things in different contexts. It's all about the context, really. If the context is immediately recognizable, then the symbols become one dimensional. They cannot compare with their real world counterparts, and are considered 'childish'. I'll give you an example. Country A attacks Country B and kills all their children. Country B retaliates by starving, and soon die out. Country A comes under fire from ruling conglomerate of countries, and have to give themselves up to international law.
If I were to dress this story in the garb of fantastika, I could come up with the following: A bunch of sorcerors attack a peaceful community of tree elves and burn their forest to the ground. The tree elves destroy their entire bank of seeds to be sown later on, and thus not only kill themselves but endanger future generations of the sorcerers who would need the forests to survive.
This is pretty direct allegory, but does it shed light on what relationship the tree elves had with their environment? Does it shed light on the nature of sorcery? You see, these need to be taken seriously. It's that eternal paradox: in order to write fantasy seriously, which means that it acts as a prism to real life situations, you need to take it seriously enough to elaborate upon its motivations. It's only by giving in to escapism in a structured way can you not be escapist.
Ishiguro seems to have done a brilliant job of that, in spite of it being very obviously allegorical. A fog of forgetfulness seems to have taken over medieval England. This is both a good thing, and a bad thing. The good thing is that no one knows their history, and therefore don't want to kill each other. The bad thing is no one knows their history. The race memories are hidden. So, they are safe at the cost of their identities.
The question the novel poses is: how important is identity compared to a bland existence? Can crimes of the past really be forgotten away, or do they necessarily need violence to cleanse it of all the bad blood?
It's a very serious question, and Ishiguro's novel is a very serious book. But it's also a beautiful painting.
