When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro

I really wanted to like this book.  I still think about Never Let Me Go, also by Ishiguro, and hoped for something I would like as much.  I understood that his books were all supposed to be different, but I had high hopes.

This story is about a boy named Christopher who grows up in Shanghai in the early 1900s.  When his parents mysteriously disappear during his childhood, he is sent to London where he grows up to become a detective.  As an adult he returns to Shanghai to try and find out what happened to his parents, his ultimate reason for becoming a detective.  The storyline was good, with enough interesting characters and plot twists to keep me interested.  Christopher is somewhat of an unreliable narrator - that or he himself doesn't know the difference sometimes between fact and fiction.

However, the telling of the story - the tone - was really not compelling.  I remember while reading Never Let Me Go that the acetic nature of the storytelling was eerie, and supported the story quite well.  In this case, that same tone, rather dry and unemotional, was entirely wrong for this story.  It ultimately ruined my experience of reading this book.