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sherbertwells's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Beyond its starched, Booker-Prize-Winning exterior, Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1989 novel The Remains of the Day is the story of an apologist. Stevens, the narrator and a well-respected butler near the end of his career, spends half of his 200 pages stoically defending the reputation of his former employer, whose wrongs—it is evidence of Stevens’ success that I do not know if ‘wrongs’ is the proper word—slowly crystallize between pages and pages of curt, nostalgia-tinged minutiae.
I am told that many of Ishiguro’s novels are about looking back, and this is certainly the case in The Remains of the Day. By the time the story begins, the aristocratic era is over and Stevens’ new employer nonchalantly allows his butler to tour the English countryside in a borrowed Ford. The ‘commoners’ along the route, which stretches from Oxfordshire to Cornwall, seem fairly happy: Britain is finally safe from the Nazis and Stephens hopes to see an old friend again. So why does his mind return to Darlington Hall, to the character of Lord Darlington and to the unacknowledged sacrifices he performed across years of upright service? Were things always like this?
Perhaps they were. Revelations hit like airbags in a wreck. After reading one chilling memory—I recommend you read it yourself—I closed the book and asked my father incredulously, “Was this in the [1993 Merchant Ivory] movie?” It was not. And The Remains of the Day is full of incidents like it.
If you like unreliable narrators, you will love this book. Stevens is like a man examining a jigsaw puzzle, turning over each piece in his hand and trying to convince himself it doesn’t belong in the obvious place. He’s not pitiable, though; his voice is so controlled and his (Ishiguro’s) prose is so pleasant that on the final page I felt a little nostalgia for that age in which I had never lived and whose flaws had so recently been dissected.
I wish I could summon quotes to demonstrate the book’s resplendence, but I recently returned The Remains of the Day to my local library. I do not love the book enough to purchase a physical copy, but I have found in it enough admirable qualities—quiet pain, intriguing tangents and the second-best narrator I’ve ever read—to continue with Ishiguro’s other works. Am I sorry?
I shouldn’t be sorry, should I?
Content Warnings
Moderate: Antisemitism and Death of parent
Minor: Child death and Grief