PositiveThe New Republic...the way that a single person remembers and forgets is not the same as the way a nation does, and what one wants to remember can also be what the other needs to forget. This is the conflict that lies at the heart of The Buried Giant ... Ishiguro never explicitly tells us what period we are in, and the resulting vagueness shrouds the story in myth ...actually feels very modern — despite all its talk of ogres, warriors, and dragons. It reprises the same themes Ishiguro has dealt with his entire career: deeply flawed people grappling with dueling impulses and loyalties — to their ideals, identities, and nations ... The writing is at times lush and thrilling, rolling the gothic, fantastical, political, and philosophical into one ... The Buried Giant may feel very different from Ishiguro’s previous works, but the concerns that lie at its heart have preoccupied him his entire career.
Lauren Groff
MixedThe New Republic\"Groff isn’t much interested in dissecting the obvious questions raised by a split narrative: the subjectivity of memory, the subtle, often gendered, differences in perception. The differences between Lotto and Mathilde’s stories are much more dramatic, plot points rather than psychological nuances. What comes across instead are two vibrant individuals and the shifting constellations of family and friends that shape them, a feat all the more remarkable given that the prose doesn’t noticeably change between sections...Nonetheless Groff’s rich, energetic prose keeps Fates and Furies afloat, and it’s a testament to her abilities as a portraitist that Lotto, and especially Mathilde, are fascinating individuals, even if the novel doesn’t quite come together as a whole.\
