John Salinsky
GP
and author, Wembley
If
you want to enjoy a really good novel and learn even more
about the
importance of parents, you could read When we were
orphans.
The hero of Ishiguro's latest novel is a detective. Not a
policeman,
as he is at pains to make clear, but a brilliant
‘consultant’ like
Sherlock Holmes or Lord Peter Wimsey. Did such people ever
exist in
real life? Hard to say, but Christopher Banks seems to be
making
quite a success of his profession, having solved several
notoriously
difficult ‘cases’, which have left Scotland Yard
baffled. The
book is set mainly in the 1920s and 1930s, and Ishiguro's
prose has
an aristocratic period elegance that is quite convincing.
Gradually
we learn more about Christopher's childhood. He lived with
his
European parents in the British colony of Shanghai until the
age of
10 when first his father and then his mother mysteriously
disappeared. Christopher is led to believe by the other
adults that
they have been kidnapped because of their opposition to the
opium
trade. He is hurriedly brought to England and slotted into
the
Public School system where he does his best to blend in.
After a
while, we realize that he wants to become a private
detective so
that he can return to Shanghai and rescue his parents whom he
believes are still alive.
In
England, Christopher mixes in upper class society, solving
crimes
but keeping an eye on developments in the East. He is
attracted to
other orphans, including a glamorous young woman called
Sarah, and a
little girl called Jennifer whom he decides to adopt. The
story then
flashes back to his boyhood in Shanghai and his friendship
with a
Japanese boy with whom he plays a game about looking for his
father.
Eventually,
the grown up Christopher returns to Shanghai and, in the
middle of
the Sino-Japanese war, he fights his way through shell-
damaged
houses, trying to find the house where he believes his
parents are
still held captive. This part of the book is very gripping
and you
don't know whether to believe he will really find his
parents or
not. In the end, there is a brutal disillusionment for
Christopher
as he learns some painful truths about his past. But his
spirit,
enclosed in a tough protective shell, is undefeated, and in
a moving
final chapter he achieves a kind of peace.
In
family practice, we can often understand our patients' problems
better
if we know something about their childhood and their
experiences
with their parents. Like Christopher, we may have to do some
detective work to help our patients to trace the origin of
their
psychosomatic symptoms. When we were orphans is a
very good
read. It also made me think about how we seem to need the
continued
presence and unconditional love of our internal parents all
the way
to the end of our own lives.
Salinsky
John.“When we were orphans“,Oxford Journals 2008<http:/
/fampra.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/19/3/317>
Family
Practice Vol. 19, No. 3, 317
© Oxford
University
Press 2002
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