The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
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Book Reviews of The Remains of the Day
Book Review: It's never too late to learn how to banter
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Remains of the Day" is an incredibly moving book about Stevens, a conscientious and dedicated butler who lives to work and works to live for his employer, Lord Darlington, at Darlington Hall in postwar England. After decades of hustle-and-bustle service at this residence and Lord Darlington's eventual death, Stevens suddenly finds himself under the employ of a new well-to-do resident of Darlington Hall, an American named Mr. Farraday, who recommends his butler take a well-deserved break and "motor" across the English countryside. After much deliberating, Stevens agrees to do this, and the story is about his acutely sad, monumental, troubling and sometimes crowning moments during the Darlington Hall "glory years," when important world leaders visited on a regular basis.
Stevens runs the massive household in a professional but polite manner, as all good butlers were expected to do during that time period. His nuanced narration as he reveals his past and present world is ornate and verbose -- yet engrossing -- while his manners are impeccable 24 hours a day, no matter who he comes across. Many people who don't know what Stevens' line of work is mistake him for a distinguished, rich gentleman, a label he is in no hurry to correct. In addition, the prideful butler has no sense of humor and sadly never learned to "banter" with people, even those close to him. This makes for some heartbreaking moments. Whether he makes a cringe-inducing joke among strangers at a cozy inn, attempts to reach out to his equally hardworking and chilly father or incrementally chooses to forgo the opportunity for true love with his close colleague Miss Kenton, Stevens is that rare person who sacrifices most of life's joys for his job.
In choosing to serve the master of the household in the only way he knows how -- by committing 100 percent of himself and his energies to Lord Darlington and Darlington Hall -- it could be argued that Stevens, who does what he does in the name of "dignity," missed out on a fuller life of human warmth. As he classily waited on world-renowned political leaders hand and foot at crucial Darlington Hall meetings, Stevens' defense of living such a life was that he played a small role in influencing the outcome of future world events.
And in a world where shades of gray rule supreme, one could easily make various cases that Stevens' choice to unfailingly serve Lord Darlington during the prime of both of their lives was admirable, tragic or a mixture of both. As the story concludes, Stevens drops his ever-present stoic persona and honestly opens up, even bravely admitting regrets. Thankfully, even at an advanced age, he learns a great lesson: It's never too late to learn how to banter, and to enjoy what's left of your life -- the remains of the day.
Book Review: a great book
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Remains of the Day" is an unforgettable book. The novel tells the story of Stevens, an English butler who journeys across the English countryside to meet with an old colleague with the hope of recruiting her back to Darlington Hall. As Stevens ventures away from his workplace for the first time in decades, he finds himself reminiscing about his former employer, an unofficial English diplomat who worked to dispel European tension between the two world wars. Stevens records his recollections in the form of a journal; these journal entries comprise "The Remains of the Day".
Stevens is a haunting character, unforgettable for his obsessive desire for perfection and for the devastation this obsessiveness ultimately causes him. Ishiguro examines the question of what it means to "inhabit" the role of butler, a necessity if Stevens is to perform his job properly. To be a good butler requires Stevens to show no emotion, but he lives at Darlington Hall and is never off-duty, meaning that he rarely gets the chance to "disrobe" and consider his own needs. Consequently, when afforded the opportunity to leave home by his new employer, an American businessman, Stevens allows the role of butler to fall away ever so slightly. The result is a conflicted account of the major events of Stevens' employment: recollections of Lord Darlington both confident of his decency and undermined by doubt.
Ishiguro also examines the question of "dignity": whether working for a man of apparent "greatness" makes Stevens great by extension, or whether it is instead pathetic to surrender so much control. Stevens confronts this question head-on in the book's final pages, in a scene on a pier that will stay with you indefinitely.
Then there is, of course, Miss Kenton. A maid at Darlington Hall during most of Stevens's tenure there, Miss Kenton is the person we want Stevens to be: committed to her work but willing to assess the politics of her employer. Through their mutual responsibility for the operations of the household, Stevens and Miss Kenton develop feelings for one another. Miss Kenton reveals her affection through teasing and gentle nosiness, and Stevens responds with awkwardness and, more often, strictness. When Stevens meets Miss Kenton toward the end of the book, his new self-awareness allows us to finally understand the vitality of their relationship and to feel the devastation of its lost potential.
"The Remains of the Day" is my favorite present to give, and I get jealous of friends reading it for the first time. Kazuo Ishiguro is a masterful author, and you will wonder why it took so long for a book like this to be written. Its scenes and narrator will both stay with you vividly.
Book Review: One of the few books that deserves to be called "exquisite"
Summary: 5 Stars
Despite years of avoiding this book because of a vague sense that it was a boring little English-gentry novel, I'm happy to report that it's actually exquisite. The story goes like so: Stevens, the butler at Darlington House -- one of those British manors that has stood for longer than most nations, including ours -- takes a rare holiday, driving off into the British countryside to see the country that he apparently has had very little time to see in his many years of butlering. Indeed, it's possible that he's never left Darlington House: he seems to spend most of his rare bits of free time tucked away in his windowless, badly-lit office. Such has been his life for perhaps half a century.
But it's after World War II, and Britain is not what it once was. The Darlington Houses, and their dozens of servants, have fallen into disuse; whenever someone mentions another manor home, the many unused rooms are invariably covered with plastic sheeting. It's a sad time to be a butler.
Darlington House has passed into the ownership of a wealthy American man who, while he's a gentleman by American standards, is more crass than Stevens is used to. He tries to banter with Stevens in a very American way, and Stevens just cannot make head or tail of it. Some of the funniest scenes in The Remains of the Day center on Stevens's attempts to return the verbal play in his restrained British butler's style; they're met with only puzzlement.
That restrained butler's style is the source both of the book's comedy, and its heartbreak. A truly great butler, says Stevens, must be a butler to his core. He cannot be a dignified butler one moment and a bantering, jocular everyman the next. The only times when he may let his guard down are when he is completely alone.
Note that: alone. A butler, one assumes, would make a terrible husband. Stevens is incapable of interacting with other human beings the way the rest of us would. A feisty, strong-willed, passionate woman joins the staff at Darlington House, and all Stevens can do is stare.
We only occasionally can pierce through the veil of his butlerish self-restraint, and only then when he describes what other people say to him. Most of the time, the world desires that he be just as he is: courteous to a fault, merely the vehicle for his master's desires -- a cipher to everyone including himself. But every now and again, others would enjoy interacting with a human. Stevens doesn't know how to be a human. Only once does he admit to himself that he is experiencing a human foible. That ends, and back he returns to his master.
It's a 200-page read, and a brisk one at that. It is a tiny, exquisite sculpture of a man.
Book Review: Couldn't put it down ...
Summary: 5 Stars
I had watched the movie prior to reading the novel. An interview with Kazuo Ishiguro on the DVD intrigued me. Kazuo's writing style is beautiful.
The story is told in the first person and captures your attention from the first paragraph. I was glad I had watched the movie first as Anthony Hopkins nailed the character of Stephens, including all the subtleties of his personality. Normally books and the movies made from them do not coincide so well, but I could hear Anthony Hopkins voice in my head as I read the book. They enhanced one another. In fact, seeing the movie first was a plus.
What really hit me, even moreso in the book, was how detached Stephens was from his own emotional side preventing him from having a real connection with other people. When his father died, Lord Darlington approaches Stephens while he is working and asks if he is alright. Stephens is puzzled for a second regarding the question and then Lord Darlington comments that Stephens is crying. Stephens was so detached from his emotions that he did not seem to realize he was doing so.
When Mr. Farraday comes on the scene, he attempts to engage Stephens in what Stephens refers to as "banter". Fact of the matter is, it was simply regular conversation people engage in. But, Stephens is at a loss and attempts to practice so as to develop this skill to please his new boss.
Even at the end of the book, after he meets with Miss Benton and realizes that his heart is breaking, he still cannot let it show. He sits on the pier listening to other people engaging in general conversation and once again thinks he will have to practice this "banter" to be a better servant to Mr. Farraday.
Stephens spent so much of his life, all his life actually, trying to achieve that perfect dignity he felt would make him a superlative butler. He dedicated his life to serving a man who, it turns out, was not necessarily the grand gentleman Stephens had believed him to be.
The title is such a metaphor for so many aspects of this book. The remains of the literal day, which Stephens simply endures alone. The remains of his life, which is devoid of real human interrelating. The remains of what-could-have-been with Ms. Benton. The remains of Lord Darlington's reputation and how Stephens feels this reflects on him in terms of having dedicated his life in service to this man.
I highly recommend this book. I'm sure I will be reading it a second and third time. Right now I'm reading "A Pale View Of Hills" and enjoying it thoroughly. Kazuo Ishiguro is a fantastic writer. I look forward to reading all his works.
Book Review: A gem of a butler
Summary: 5 Stars
May I venture to say, and I hope I am not being presumptuous here, that Mr Kazuo Ishiguro has achieved a remarkable feat here in his portrayal of an upper class English servant between the two wars. In spite of his birth language and comparative youth, he was born after WWII, Mr Ishiguro has captured the quiet dignity and tone of a butler whose life task is to provide exemplary service to his betters, anticipating their every whim and supporting their efforts to uphold the honour required of a gentleman.
Whilst his grasp of the English language is undoubtedly attributable to the young age at which Mr Ishiguro moved to Great Britain, his research skills and deep understanding of the human psyche shine as he describes the personal and physical journey of his protagonist, Mr Stevens junior, butler to the late, and in some circles, less than lamented Lord Darlington.
Mr Stevens is a man of the highest ideals, counting as paramount his devotion to his duty to further his employer's aims and his maintenance of his own professional `dignity'. Sadly, it might be said, that this comes at some considerable cost as Mr Stevens represses all personal feelings, including his love for the passionate Miss Kenton and deep affection and respect for his own father, in favour of fulfilling his professional duties. In fact, it could be said, if one could be excused for using the parlance of the inhabitants of the Antipodes, that Mr Stevens would not recognize an emotion if it bit him on the, eh, nether regions.
The bleakness of the ending is palliated by Mr Steven's decision to enjoy the remains of his day. He has hit upon a key for achieving this and resolves to "look at this whole matter of bantering more enthusiastically ... particularly if it is the case that in bantering lies the key to human warmth." With his customary application Mr Sevens resolves to acquire the ability as it is "hardly an unreasonable duty for an employer to expect a professional to perform." (p245, First Vintage International Edition, September 1990)
The beauty of this novel lies in the language; one finds one's self starting to adopt a faint echo of it in one's speech and writing, to the surprise of close family and acquaintances. Mr Ishiguro's mastery is shown in the effortless shifts from present to past; in the tone of Mr Steven's language; and by allowing the reader to understand Mr Stevens long before he is able to even approach understanding either himself or the significance of the events happening around him.
This novel is highly recommended to the discerning reader.