The Buried Giant offers a beautiful relationship of an older married couple. (The Unconsoled is about a man living in an insane asylum, not some great pianist who travels the world and gives a concert.sorry if that's what folks think it was about.) This book is like The Unconsoled in that it treats a concept-sanity for The Unconsoled, memory for Buried Giant. He needed that journey to accept her fate to pass alone before he did. He had a revelation, looked at my mother, and then was gone forever. At some point, a memory comes that their son has died, and this reminds me of those final moments for my father who died of Alzheimer's. The shards of memory come and go as an Alzheimer's patient.but all the while, they are focused on moving forward together. Along the way, they meet dangers.people who help them.people who hurt them.people who offer them goodness despite being somewhat evil.people who offer them evil despite being somewhat good.
Axl and Beatrice live in a convalescent home and head out toward something they can't exactly articulate. (view spoiler) [Well, I have a totally different take on this book and the ending. Axl wants to die with her, but is not his time. The bad made up their marriage just as much as the good and finally admitting that, their marriage is made well again. In the end, he and Beatrice reconcile and agree that their life together was flawed but still a good one, despite the hardships and the things they didn't want to remember. Now Axl can accept that Beatrice is going to die and finally come to terms with his son's death. Wistan slays Gawain, the strong overcoming the stubborn. The dragon is both Beatrice (old and sickly) and the pent up denial that Axl has built in his mind (the source of the mist). The pixies serve as the voice in his head trying to open his eyes to his wife's suffering, Edwin is their son, who Axl chooses to remember fierce like a warrior but who had a strong bond with his mother. Gawain is Axl, the stubborn side that refuses to let go. Wistan is Axl, the side of Axl that used to be strong. Beatrice is ready to die (Axl interprets this as visiting their son, because in the back reaches of his mind, he knows his son to be dead. Beatrice is sick, yet he is in denial about this as well. Axl in his mind has invented a reason for this loss of memory: the mist.
Either he's sick with Alzheimer's, or more likely, is in a denial so deep it has taken root as reality. They grow old, Axl choosing to forget that their marriage was once rocky, and even making himself forget that their son is even dead. Their marriage becomes rocky, but Axl pretends otherwise. (view spoiler) [Stripping the story down to the simplest elements and removing the historical and fantasy layers, here's what I took from this book:
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