The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
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Book Reviews of The Remains of the Day
Book Review: This novel is a ruthless celebration of human existence.
Summary: 5 Stars
We can't escape from the remains of the day. Every single living creature is condemned to look back once in a while and have an outlook of those turning points where we've made decisions regarding our existence. Who knows when to recognize when our own lives are, without any reasonable doubt, worthy and true? We're all intended to make decisions in our lifetime hoping that these will be worthwhile. This is our fate, to live as best as we can to make justice to the last moments of our days. Stevens is a devoted professional. He inhabits his role fully with pride. This man is only interested in practical issues regarding his duties and seeks to achieve personal fulfillment by these means. He even believes that his tasks can affect the course of history. He feels guilt and shame of showing himself to the world in incidental casual daily life matters. Avoids anything (or anyone) that might possibly distract him off his duties even in the most extreme occasions. His efforts to deviate attention on himself are justified by his noble means.
But this butler fails all throughout his narration to escape his own human nature. Whenever he's getting introspective, he tries to hide and justify his feelings, doubts and fears but always too late because the reader is always capable to see through him. He lives tormented about how things might have turned out if he had succumbed "just once" to temptation. He wonders if he might find the answer while driving across the country.
Stevens renounces his "own search" by living to fulfill the desires of an honorable and noble man. Serving as an instrument, tries to find meaning and bring dignity to his own existence. This is his worst sin of all and he knows it.
Mrs. Kenton renounces her "own search" for a while, but as she decides to drift, risk and find a mean to her existence she discovers that this brings severe consequences to her. She tries, risks and then looses. This is her triumph and her capital sin too.
The novel makes allusion of the high moral price Great Britain (and maybe Japan) paid as a result of unsuitable policies regarding world war ll. Policies promoted by paternal figures shielded in all noble titles are questioned in the novel.
Shame and deep regret for not recognizing on time the challenges of our living moments, incapacity to face reality, being late on making transcendental decisions, all this is part of what awaits for us in the last moments of our days. It is part of the living experience of every man and every country.
The motion picture as well as the written novel are not to be missed.
Book Review: Lovely, contemporary
Summary: 5 Stars
Control n 1: power to direct or regulate 2: RESERVE, RESTRAINT 3: a device for regulating a mechanism. Exemplified in the narrative of K. Ishiguro's lyrical novel "The Remains of the Day."Ishiguro achieves narrative restraint to a most remarkable degree in this lovely underrated novel. An excellent study of what can be done with 1st Person narrative, as well as what cannot, it is the retrospective tale told by head butler Stevens of Darlington Hall, who against all public opinion remains faithful to his employer, Lord Darlington. Stevens revisits the halcyon years before the start of WWII when his Lord Darlington organized English sympathy for Nazi Germany, secretly entertaining the likes of ambassador Ribbentrop at his estate. The title, from the realization its sangfroid narrator arrives at by the end of his career, proves apt as a controlling metaphor for the novel. It becomes for him a kind of epiphany that he should enjoy the remains of his own "day," satisfied that he has done all he could.
The character of Stevens isn't really all that unreliable as much as it is unsympathetic. Less unreliable than merely ingenuous. His reserve is expected of a great English majordomo and not to be mistaken for deliberate equivocation. Things are not always what they seem and our butler is never clearly complicit in the errors of his employer, nor does Stevens, who is no stranger to introspection and self-mediation, ever wish to entertain the question directly. His definition of dignity, a theme of some development late in the novel, encompasses a certain right of individual privacy, and based on one's post, limited public responsibility for matters well out of one's own hands. And we may well come to accept him by the story's end and are not really sure we see the need for the catharsis of a public confession from his character. We are more interested in how he makes amends for his private mistake, the way in which he tries to understand how utterly he failed to see Miss Kenton's true feelings for him.
In Remains of the day, in Jamesian fashion, Ishiguro excels at taking an ordinary person and making him seem important, extraordinary, with a deliberate, yet readliy accessible prose style. Lovely too is his work for the way it operates so near history yet retains the salient marks of great fiction. A beautifully rendered contrast of public and private life.
Book Review: How To Lose Your Life And Keep On Living
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of those books that you finish, and sit there for a few minutes in silence filled with the awareness that you have just read a truly great novel. Author Ishiguro provides us with the reminiscences of a stereotypically reserved British butler. It is 1956, and Stevens is nearing the end of a long, loyal career serving the inhabitants of Darlington Hall. Lord Darlington has died, and an American has purchased the estate. The once sizable staff of 27 servants has now been reduced to three. Stevens is on a brief motor trip from Oxfordshire to Cornwall to visit the former Housekeeper of Darlington Hall, Mrs. Kenton, and is hopeful of enticing her to return with him to join his small staff. From his musings while traveling we learn that Stevens repressed every aspect of his personal feelings and values in order to do his duty as head of the household staff of the estate. Duty, loyalty and dignity are the sole values that he admits to, and they have governed his life since arriving at Darlington Hall around 1927. While his father dies in an upstairs room he cannot attend to him as he must see to it that nothing goes amiss at a large conference that is underway. His dealings with Mrs. Kenton are cold and formal, though you become increasingly aware that there are feelings developing between them that go beyond those of a usual co-worker relationship. Stevens also feels that his loyal service to Lord Darlington enabled him to play a small, but meaningful role in Lord Darlington's efforts to bring about world peace.
As Stevens analyzes the past both he and the reader begin to realize that his defense of his life is falling apart. He is forced to realize that his blind support of an aristocrat may have been misguided. His denial of feelings have cost him a relationship with a woman who had fallen in love with him. Stevens has come ultimately to face the "remains of the day", that being the remaining years of his life.
The style of this novel is simple and stately. It is filled with an understated eloquence that is spellbinding. This is a reality novel of the mind. For the length of the book we are privy to Stevens's thoughts as he wrestles with them, as he tries to grapple with the disturbing feelings about his life that are bubbling to the surface.
Ishiguro is an incredibly talented author. This is a beautiful work of literature.
Book Review: "In bantering lies the key to human warmth."
Summary: 5 Stars
"A 'great' butler can only be, surely, one who can point to his years of service and say that he has applied his talents to serving a great gentleman--and through the latter, in serving humanity" (p. 117).
The Remains of the Day (1989) is the third novel by Kazuo Ishiguro (1954). It won the Booker prize in 1989. The book's title not only refers to the time of day (evening), when the narrator reflects upon his day's work, but also upon his mature age, from which he can reflect upon his life. The title also refers to the last grand houses of Great Britain's staffed with butlers such as Ishiguro's narrator, Stevens.
Stevens is a loyal English butler who has who dedicated his life to the service of Lord Darlington. Upon receiving a letter from an ex co-worker Miss Kenton describing her unhappy married life, and at the encouragement of his new employer, Mr. Farraday, an American, Stevens borrows a car to take a "motoring trip" to revisit Miss Kenton. Along the way (in a plot structure reminiscent of Bergman's Wild Strawberries - Criterion Collection) Stevens reflects upon his service to Lord Darlington, the meaning of "dignity," his relationship with his father, and his true feelings for Miss Kenton, whom he cherishes. It was because of his service to Lord Darlington that Stevens never acted upon his love for Miss Kenton. Although she offered him her love, he refused to even acknowledge her feelings by allowing himself to be "off duty" in her presence (p. 169). Rather, all his life Stevens has been consumed by the desire to be a "great" butler, which for him has meant embodying the ideals of service, dignity, and composure. Ultimately, The Remains of The Day is a poignant meditation upon missed opportunities and lost love; one cannot "turn back the clock," as Stevens puts it (p. 239). Ishiguro succeeds at drawing the reader into Stevens' loss as a result of placing duty above the needs of his heart. This is a perfect novel, one that I highly recommend, along with the 1993 Merchant-Ivory must-see film The Remains of the Day (Special Edition) starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.
One of my 10 favorite novels of the last 25 years.
G. Merritt
Book Review: A convincingly written narrative of a long-time butler, with the complication of an ureliable narrator
Summary: 5 Stars
Kazuo Ishiguro's novel THE REMAINS OF THE DAY is the story of Stevens, the butler at a large English house in Oxfordshire from the early 1920s to 1956, the time that the book opens. When his new employer, a newly rich American who now owns the estate, returns to his home country for a few days, he tells Stevens he should travel a bit within England. Stevens sets off on a journey to the West Country, intending to visit one Miss Kenton, his colleague on the house staff for many years before the war. While he travels Stevens, who narrates the novel in first person, recalls the whole breadth of his career.
The dialogue that Ishiguro writes for Stevens, the formal and business-like responses of the servant, is remarkably convincing. It is strict and unemotional and yet never becomes tiring to read. And the overt issues of the novel, such as the difficulty of reconciling work and personal life, and the great changes England went through during these decades are very engaging for the reader. While early reviews praised THE REMAINS OF THE DAY but questioned how much readers outside of England would get from the novel, I think that anyone with a basic knowledge of the country's history will appreciate the dramatic scope of years in Ishiguro's book.
But what is special about THE REMAINS OF THE DAY is its unreliable narrator. Stevens, so wrapped up in ideas of duty and dedication, speaks much about his career but little of the actual events that he has gone through. His love for Miss Kenton is deduced only through the actions and words of characters around him. Nor does Stevens give any judgement on the men he serves, for the shady dealings of his former employer are revealed only in passing as Steven recalls a young man who often visited the house. The novel is beautiful and entertaining on the first read, but it rewards rereading, for one can find instances where Stevens is not being honest about some crucial matter.
I was impressed by THE REMAINS OF THE DAY. As a fan of Gene Wolfe--I'm thinking especially of "The Book of the New Sun" or "The Fifth Head of Cerberus"--I've grown to love unreliable narrators. But anyone looking for a simple and dramatic story of how a man can dedicate his life to the service of others will find much to enjoy in the novel.