In 1930s London, Christopher Banks has become one of England’s most celebrated detectives.

As is the case with other great English detectives of fiction, such as Sherlock Holmes or Lord Peter Whimsy, Christopher Banks solves his cases with the ease and aplomb befitting proper English gentlemen.

But perhaps unlike other detective stories, which often feature an omniscient narrator, When We Were Orphans is told solely from Banks’ point of view. Ishiguro uses the first-person point of view of a very limited narrator who speaks very highly of his own accomplishments. We become aware through the course of the novel that despite Banks’ illustrious reputation, Banks is anything but a stalwart bastion of wisdom and circumspection. Instead, he is a man full of cloudy memories and rabbit-trail thoughts.

Unlike the two former detectives and their stories, we never hear about the cases that Banks ostensibly does such a brilliant job sleuthing. We know nothing of Banks’ career besides his mention of cases solved and awards received. All scanty mentions of Banks’ brilliant career prove to be foils to the one unsolved case which refuses to resolve itself into a tidy resolution: the disappearance of first Banks’ father and then his mother when Banks was a boy growing up in the International Settlement in Shanghai, China. This is the case with which When We Were Orphans is primarily concerned.

Banks guides us through the “truth” of his memories while reminding the reader that even he is not sure about the truth of his reminiscences. Banks sees everything through the very thick and distorting lens of his childhood memories. He consistently returns to the past in order to illuminate the present throughout the novel, and it becomes apparent that the way Banks views his past has inhibited him from seeing the way things really were and are.

Because Banks is unable to see things as they really are we are not able to see reality either, for Banks’ point-of-view is the only view we are given. However, as Banks moves like a shuttlecock back and forth from the past, we realise that Banks has been playing the role of the detective searching for his parents ever since his parents disappeared. It is a role that necessitates (in his mind) a successful ending—the recovery of his parents from their kidnappers.

Banks sees himself as a Messiah figure for his parents, and, less convincingly, an ordering principle for civilisation. The following quote summarises how Banks views himself and men like him who are also involved in solving crimes:

‘At times like these,’ I said, ‘I can well understand, one gets very discouraged. But if I may say so, it’s well you didn’t follow your father’s advice. Because men of your calibre, inspector, are rare. And those of us whose duty it is to combat evil, we are…how might I put it? We’re like the twine that holds together the slats of a wooden blind. Should we fail to hold strong, then everything would scatter.’

Banks sees himself as he believes other see him—a great man with the capabilities of fighting evil and slaying it, of seeing the heart of the problems existing in the pre-Second World War days and solving them. However, by reading of the actions and responses of Banks the reader realises that Banks is almost completely ignorant of the world around him despite his words of self-praise.

His ignorance is revealed by the fact that Banks’ descriptions of the people closest to him are flat and lifeless—perhaps only given in order to explain some facet of himself. And a greater piece of evidence concerning Banks’ ignorance of the world outside and his obsession with the events within his own life is Banks’ place in time—the days between two world wars.

There is tremendous significance in the fact that the novel begins in the interim between two world wars yet Banks himself makes almost no mention of these two events. The first catastrophe in Banks’ life—the disappearance of his parents and his subsequent removal to England—takes place in Shanghai during what must have been the early days of the First World War. The second catastrophe—the search for his parents in and around the International Settlement in Shanghai and his learning of the truth behind the first catastrophe—occurs amongst the rubble caused by the rumblings and explosions marking the beginning of the Second World War. Both personal travesties completely change the way he sees the world around him, and his place in that world—one for the worse, the other for the better. Although he never willingly participates in the wars of the world around him, Banks becomes a veteran of the wars within his private life.

While Banks seeks to be the twine holding the wooden slats together, he is blind to the complexities of reality, and becomes a Don Quixote pursuing fights with windmills. It is only when he allows the slats to fall where they may that he sees the world as it is—a brittle place that often bruises your feet as you walk its paths. He also learns that he is incapable of being a saviour of any merit, and therefore releases his pride and comes face to face with himself, a lonely and broken man.

When Banks finally learns the truth of his past, he is finally free to take his eyes off himself and directs them onto those around him. He realises how he hurt those whom he could not love, and we are also freed to be able to see the other characters as complex people in complex situations, no longer the stick figures of Banks’ mind.

Ishiguro’s work is a complex one with intertwining memories that finally knit themselves into a whole—providing relief to the reader weary from anxiously following Banks through the rubble of his life. When We Were Orphans is a powerful reminder of the need for a saviour and of the need to see things as they truly are. Like any great detective story, it keeps you on the edge of your seat, hungry for a resolution. Unlike those stories, however, this whodunit can only be solved when the brilliant detective realises his own shortcomings and accepts the paradoxes and incongruities of reality.