Nocturnes, by Kazuo Ishiguro

Even when he is mediocre, Kazuo Ishiguro is still pretty good. I found these stories strangely magnetic, even though they never really came together for me. The voice was uniform throughout, despite the fact that each was narrated by someone else, and the prose was vaguely annoying. It was more American than British, and somehow saccharine and cloying. Although the stories purported to be meditations on music and nightfall, the music seemed more like a pretext, and didn't really infiltrate the stories. Attempts to interweave the tales felt hamfisted and unnecessary: the characters weren't developed enough that knowing something about them from a previous episode made any difference. Still, you did somehow want to keep reading, and there was something compelling about the twists and turns of the interactions between the characters. Overall though, a surprisingly weak effort from such a gifted author.