A view of pale hills

In Ishiguros A Pale View of Hills, one thing that baffled me is the title, and the the way it's phrased gives you the impression that what you are reading is a very accurate recollection of events, as if faded by time. It isn't until the end of the novel that you realize that four characters are actually only two people. Etsuko is Sachiko and Keiko is Mariko.  Because of this blurred acuity, it's almost natural that these memories are not only inaccurate but also out of order in time. I think to demonstrate Etsukos' distorted perception of events the title should be changed to "A View of Pale Hills" illustrating a personal act of "viewing".

Etsuko even admits herself that memory can be a unreliable thing; often it is heavily colored by the circumstances in which one remembers and no doubt applies to her past recollections. In other words, as learned from Freud small memories can mean big things in childhood, a way of diverting personal traumas. Etsuko deals with feelings of culpability for her daughters suicide as a result of neglecting her in her childhood. Therefore, creating another person that isn't her that she could look at from another view, almost like watching a old video of yourself on a tv screen but it was a different time.
In the end, all of these concepts come into play about distortion of memory and recollection of past events.