The author of A Pale View of Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro, has a life history that would make one wonder if shades of it bleed into this very novel. He seems to have had an analogous experience with the characters in his story. The author was born in Nagasaki, Japan and uprooted to England after the war at the age of five, in the same way the main characters, Etsuko, Sachiko and their daughters, leave Japan after the war. Given his family's first hand knowledge of a city demolished by an atomic bomb, the author appears to be interested in exploring the psychological impact of trauma on the survivors of his culture.

Concerning the nature and workings of memory, Ishiguro is most fascinated by the way in which people have a tendency to mentally edit the content of memories in order to cope with traumatic experiences. The writer creates a first person narrative told through the recollections of a Japanese woman, Etsuko, who carries forth this tendency. As strategies of coping, Etsuko alters, blurs, and confuses memory details throughout her narration, as she recalls the accounts of her past. As a result, the reader gains little absolute truth about the characters and Etsuko becomes an unstable source of explanation for the events that unfold. Ishiguro exposes the narrator's awareness of this fact near the end of the novel when Etsuko reveals that “Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily colored by the circumstances in which one remembers, and no doubt this applies to certain of the recollections I have gathered here” (156). After relying on her stories as historical accounts throughout the book, the narrator tells us she cannot provide a perfectly clear representation of her past. The writing technique of bringing this realization to light at such a late point in the story, clues us in to people's need to edit certain memories in order to go on living. In effect, we are left to put the pieces together ourselves. To make sense of the Ishiguro's fascination with memory, we attempt to figure out why he needs Etsuko to deal with unimaginable loss by altering her memories, and thus, her narrative.

In addition to the hazy boundaries of Etsuko's memories, the author's overall narrative choices leave out important aspects relevant to the comprehension of the character's traumatic past. For instance, the sequence of events before the war, the character's quality of life, who and what specifically was lost, and what that ultimately meant for the people, is touched only on the surface. In addition, Etsuko barely speaks directly of the implications the outcome of war has on the lives of the characters. Throughout the novel's entirety, Ishiguro writes minimal literal references to an atomic bombing in Japan and how people responded to it. Early on, Etsuko flatly recalls “…the bomb had fallen and afterwards all that remained were charred ruins… it was a health hazard…months went by and nothing was done” (11). In describing observed reactions to the aftermath she adds, “…there were those who had suffered, those with sad and terrible memories. But to watch them each day, busily involved with their husbands and their children, I found this hard to believe—that their lives had ever held the tragedies and nightmares of wartime” (13). By the mood Ishiguro sets in her narration, the author emphasizes that Etsuko's suppressed acceptance of the harsh realities were echoed by other Japanese families in the area. These references, being short and vague, do not make a strong impact for the reader, and hang like a dull memory as Etsuko tells the rest of her story.

The capacity of the author to depict the narrator's trauma is cleverly unveiled in the way he shows Etsuko's strategies of coping. She skirts around the perimeter of her memories without actually confronting her painful past. Keiko, Etsuko's eldest daughter, being a disturbed young woman, sadly takes her own life in an apartment where she lived alone. Early in the story, Ishiguro introduces this information and implies that Etsuko suppresses her relationship with her remaining, living daughter, Nikki. Following Keiko's suicide, the author has Nikki's visit to her mother serve as a catalyst for Etsuko's current, haunting dreams as well as the triggering of past memories. Ishiguro illustrates this idea when the narrator says, “I have no great wish to dwell on Keiko now, it brings me little comfort. I only mention her here because…I remembered Sachiko…” (11). Etsuko's dreams of a little girl on a swing ignite remembrances of two other characters, Sachiko and her daughter Mariko, enabling Etsuko to graze the edges of her own memories through their relationship. Etsuko edits her memory by diminishing her reflections on Keiko and displacing them with long drawn out stories about this other mother and daughter, rather than her relationship with her own daughter. Etsuko tells of a trip she took to the Hills of Inasa with Sachiko and Mariko (103–120). It is not until the very end of the book that it is discovered not to be Mariko who went to Inasa after all. When Nikki asks her mother what was so special about that specific trip, Etsuko replies that, “…Keiko was happy that day. We rode on the cable-cars…It's just a happy memory, that's all” (182). We now know it was Keiko and not Mariko as originally told. Ishiguro spends a long time developing the friendship between Etsuko and Sachiko by portraying mundane interactions between the two women. Eventually Sachiko shares a horrific account of an incident where a mother is drowning her baby. She reveals that five-year-old Mariko was witness to the gruesome event. Ironically, Sachiko dismisses Mariko's memories. Etsuko remembers Sachiko reducing her daughter's act of remembering this image of a woman to that of an obsession—as if there were something wrong with Mariko. Sachiko implies shame and humiliation in this act of weakness when she says, “You know how it is with children, they play at make-believe and they get confused where their fantasies begin and end” (75). Ishiguro wants us to understand how their culture embraces this system of editing memories for all ages in an attempt to be optimistic.

Ishiguro accentuates the optimistic notions of the character's discussion of the times, rather than retell of the devastation, as the narrator recalls her stories. In order to depict the ways memories are edited, the author highlights this optimism by calling attention to Etsuko's relationship with Mrs. Fujiwara. She was a best friend to Etsuko's mother as well as the mother of Etsuko's boyfriend. Eventually we learn that pre-war she was a wealthy woman with a husband and five children who also lost everything in the bombing except her eldest son. Despite this, post-war she bravely starts her own business as a noodle-shop owner and fixedly looks forward to the future. However, in order to do so, the author shows how she too decides to eschew the events of the past. For instance, Etsuko meets with Mrs. Fujiwara and is obviously worried of being newly pregnant after the conditions left by the atomic bomb. Mrs. Fujiwara attempts to cheer her up by relating her first pregnancy to that of Etsuko's circumstance: “…I remember…there was an earthquake, quite a large one. I was carrying Kazuo then. He came out perfectly healthy though. Try not to worry too much, Etsuko” (24). Ishiguro shows Mrs. Fujiwara editing the horrific memory of the bombing by comparing it to a less traumatic memory of an earthquake. Furthermore, this optimism is marked when Mrs. Fujiwara says to Etsuko, “You must keep your mind on happy things now. Your child. And the future” (24), and “…It's a shame, a pregnant girl and her husband spending their Sundays thinking about the dead… They should be thinking about the future” (25). By attributing the “just be positive” attitude towards the future, implications of an atrocious trauma are minimized. This is most apparent when Etsuko is viewing an area of the city that was torn apart from the bomb, but had since been rebuilt. She says to Sachiko, “…I'm going to be optimistic… to have a happy future. Mrs. Fujiwara always tells me… to keep looking forward… If people didn't do that, then all this… would still be rubble” (111).

At many points throughout the novel, Etsuko is shown spending countless hours staring out through windows. Is she gazing at the pale view of hills in an attempt to forget? The way in which Ishiguro draws the characters in his storyline seem to deprive them of access to their memories freely. He does not allow for the open narrative of their memories to be reached. This raises two questions for the reader. Is it the memories of trauma and obliteration being edited? Or rather, is it the memories of love and warmth in relationships and life that precede the bombing and annihilation that are altered? Each story in the narration takes place after the bombing occurs in Nagasaki. Throughout Etsuko's narration there is an allusion to a wonderful life she may have experienced before the bombing. However, with every remembrance, what appears to be edited are the good stories—everything that was taken away from the characters with war. Their recollections remind them of the good life, one that is irretrievable, and that is where the trauma may truly lie.