Ishiguros first novel is a great story about values, the Japanese tradition and life after the second world war in Nagasaki. Etsuko a woman in England remembers the time when she was pregnant with her first child and met people who tried to cope with the changed circumstances. But Etsukos memories are diffuse and cannot answer all the questions. Etsuko gets a visit from her second daughter and her memory gets not only back to her first daughter Keiko who committed suicide but mainly back to to the life in Nagasaki shortly after the second world war an the fall of the atomic bomb. „Things have changed so much.“ Etsuko' s father-in-law can´ t understand why the times have changed so dramatically. „We cared deeply for the country and worked hard to ensure the correct values were preserved and handed on.“ The people are struggling to find their place in this environment. Etsuko is pregnant with her first daughter Keiko and meets the older woman Sachiko and her teenage daughter. They live in an old shabby wooden cottage near the river and the wasteground. They are not fitting in this place with their precious china. „I' m very happy with my life where i am...That' s nothing i' m ashamed of.“ The story of Sachiko resembles in some ways Etsuko' s own story. She wants to move away to another country to give her daughter what she thinks might be the best for her. „Don' t you understand that, child?“ Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki but his family moved away to England when he was just five years old. So he surely knows the English and the Japanese lifestyle, their values and their behaviour. Till now he wrote six novels and has won many prizes like the Booker-Prize for „The remains of the day“ which was adapted to an arward-winning film. „A pale of view hills“ was his first novel. Ishiguro likes to tell his stories through the memories of his protagonists. In this book the memories of Etsuko are fragile an diffuse and often there is just a glimpse of what really had happened in the past. „They wouldn' t understand really, they wouldn' t understand how i felt about it.“ It is a story which won' t answer all the questions or what had happend to the people around Etsuko. It is like a pale view of hills, which only shows what you think you see.