The Unconsoled.

Kazuo Ishiguro Knopf, $25, 535 pp.

Kazuo Ishiguro is best known for his third novel, Remains of the Day, which won England's Booker Prize in 1989 and subsequently was rendered into a film of considerable acclaim. It would be difficult, indeed, to reread the book without seeing Anthony Hopkins as Stevens, the very British butler whose unquestioned loyalty to his role and his master causes him to forsake those who love him, to repress his own feelings, and to define self-fulfillment only through his work. Love, repression, and the value of work recur as themes in Ishiguro's latest novel, The Unconsoled, but this tale is far different from Ishiguro's previous works, including A Pale View of Hills (1 983) and An Artist of the Floating World (1986), which were notable for their elegance and economy. The Unconsoled reads like a long, very long, anxiety dream: in this case, the anxiety of contemporary culture about the ability of art to offer enlightenment and consolation. "Art," Nietzsche wrote a century ago, "is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence." The times, and art, have changed.

The Unconsoled introduces US to Ryder, a famous pianist who has arrived in a small European city where he is scheduled to perform. He is tired; this stop is only one of many on a long concert tour. At first, when he cannot remember where he is or where he is expected to be, when he keeps falling asleep and waking at odd hours, we imagine that he is merely disoriented from his travels. But as Ishiguro chronicles his interactions and activities in the days preceding the concert, we come to see that Ryder is more seriously afflicted: he is haunted by memories, filled with regret and guilt over his treatment of others, and, most significantly, beset by anxiety--about the choices he has made, about his value as a pianist, and about art.

The townspeople welcome Ryder with great eagerness and enthusiasm, but soon it is clear that they, too, suffer from anxiety. The quality of their cultural life, they believe, is declining. They do not feel a connection to much of modern art: it does not speak to them in a way that helps them make sense of their lives. Yet, like the rest of us, they have been taught that artists possess some special enlightenment, some talent at illuminating hidden meaning; art reveals truth, does it not? What should they do if they cannot apprehend that truth? When Ryder arrives in their midst, they desperately seek his help. Perhaps, they hope, he can alleviate their fears and enrich their understanding. Perhaps he can reconnect them to a culture that seems increasingly inaccessible to them.

Ryder, besides feeling uncomfortable playing the role of artistic genius, has other problems that distract him from the townspeople's needs. Tenuous stimuli thrust him repeatedly into a menacing past. One recurring memory concerns his relationship with a woman, Sophie, and her young son, Boris. Ryder rejected Sophie's love in order to pursue his career. Instead of settling down and making a home, as she wished, he chose to travel, always in search of the crucial performance that would ensure his reputation. "I have to keep going on these trips," Ryder explains to Boris, "because, you see, you can never tell when it's going to come along. I mean the very special one, the very important trip, the one that's very very important, not just for me but for everyone, everyone in the whole world .... And you see, once you miss it, there's no going back, it would be too late. It won't matter how hard I travel afterwards, it won't matter, it would be too late...."

Throughout the novel, Ryder is late for appointments, interviews, and photography sessions. He misses buses loses his sense of direction, and arrives at public gatherings unprepared. Once, he delivers a speech wearing only a dressing gown. The townspeople, however, never question his odd behavior. They make excuses for him, accommodate his needs, and even roundly applaud his efforts. They are used to the eccentricities of artists: the local conductor, Ryder soon discovers, is a notorious drunk.

Yet if they accept eccentricity, they deeply fear new ideas and racial change. After Ryder has his photograph taken in front of a monument to Max Sattler, a controversial local hero, he discovers that he has set off a public debate. The citizens do not know whether to revile or worship Sattler's "wild dreams." "He holds an attraction for certain people precisely because he's so distant, a piece of local myth," Ryder is told. "Reintroduce him as a serious prospect ... then frankly, sir, people here will panic. They will recoil. They will suddenly find themselves clinging to what they know, never mind what misery it has already brought them." In the same way, they recoil from whatever is unfamiliar and uncomfortable in art. What are they to make of the two pieces Ryder considers for his performance: "Globestructures: Option II" or "Asbestos and Fiber"

"How can people like this, untrained, provincial people, how can they ever understand such things, however great a sense of duty they feel toward the community?" one thoughtful citizen asks Ryder. Although such questions about art and culture are significant and even urgent, The Unconsoled is ultimately unsatisfying. Ryder does not emerge as a fully developed character, but rather the embodiment of an intellectual problem. In a book that explores the difficulty--perhaps the impossibility--of communication, even on the most intimate level, one might expect dialogue to be strained; but instead of dialogue, Ishiguro often juxtaposes extended monologues that become unnecessarily repetitious. It may have been Ishiguro's aim to subvert the conventions of the novel as a way of underscoring his theme, but the result is a book lacking the grace and precision that we have come to expect from a writer who, so amply in the past, has proved his intelligence, insight, and talents.

Linda Simon's reviews have appeared in,the New York Times Book Review, among other publications. She is the director of the Writing Center at Harvard University.