The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant, set in post-Roman Britain, is the story of an old married couple, Axl and Beatrice, who go on a journey to find their son. They think he lives in a village a couple of days' walk away. They're not sure, because the land is cloaked in a mist of forgetting: no-one seems to be able to remember anything beyond yesterday.
I suspect that it's something of a Marmite book: you either love it or dislike it. The prose is highly stylised, copying the stiltedness of medieval texts and older legends, but at least for me this didn't sap any of its emotion: I actually thought Ishiguro did a fantastic job of capturing how those texts can tell effective and meaningful stories without feeling entirely "real".
I also enjoyed how Ishiguro used the fantastical elements - dragons and boatmen and ogres and giants - at once metaphorical and real; again, it was a great display of how fantasy can reveal truths about love and history and war without needing to be strictly realistic.
Also, Arthurian elements! Arthurian stories are so interesting to me, and this one is no different - it calls back to everything we associate with Arthur, making a novel that's at once thoughtful and a great story.
