Nocturnes Five Stories of Music and Nightfall [Paperback]

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novelThe Remains of the Daycomes an inspired sequence of stories as affecting as it is beautiful.  
 
With the clarity and precision that have become his trademarks, Kazuo Ishiguro interlocks five short pieces of fiction to create a world that resonates with emotion, heartbreak, and humor. Here is a fragile, once famous singer, turning his back on the one thing he loves; a music junky with little else to offer his friends but opinion; a songwriter who inadvertently breaks up a marriage; a jazz musician who thinks the answer to his career lies in changing his physical appearance; and a young cellist whose tutor has devised a remarkable way to foster his talent. For each, music is a central part of their lives and, in one way or another, delivers them to an epiphany.

Expressive and harmonic, delicate yet substantive. . . . [A] true virtuoso performance. --Christian Science Monitor

In both craft and substance Nocturnes reveals a master at work. --Seattle Times
 
Immaculate. --Los Angeles Times
 
Ishiguro is, as always, a master of style and tone . . . . [Nocturnes] build[s] into a melancholic soundtrack. We're helpless to do anything but listen. --Time Out New York

Tight and assured. . . . Suffused with sympathy. --Time
 
“These stories recall Ishiguro's best known novel,The Remains of the Day. . . . By now it is clear that this exquisite stylist is serious in his pursuit of a minimal - perhaps even universal - mode of expression for the emotional experiences that define our lives as human.”—The Times, London
 
“Superb . . . a deceptively plain and easy style that rides on the surfaces of manners and decorous behavior.”—Providence Journal
 
A brilliant new l«