The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
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Book Reviews of The Remains of the Day
Book Review: A Comfortable Old Friend, A Review of The Remains of the Day
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of my all time favourite novels. The story of a butler, Mr Sterling the main character. It also features his father also a butler and Ms Kenton the housekeeper. The book offers insights into the workings of a stately english home during the time preceding the Second World War. What I particularly enjoyed about the book are the characters and the roles they portray. Mr Stevens the younger is an incredible character that is unaware he is trapped within a class system and actually likes his role within the system. It is his sense of duty that enables his naivety to develop throughout the novel. This naive sense of duty to his most noble profession, follows a procession of events that would impact greatly upon the lives of most people. However Stevens is only aware of his sense of duty to his master. Much like a dog retruning a ball to his owner, Stevens remains unaware of the events that are unfolding around him. The role of Ms Kenton in the book is to highlight the unreal world that Mr Stevens lives within. There is an obvious sense of closeness between the two characters, however due to Stevens' sense of being honourable and the duty that comes from being honourable, this allows only evotional frustration to Ms Kenton. Stevens is a portrait of repressed identity. He is unable to come to terms with his feelings and is unable to offer opinions about the politics of his master or more importantly about his own emotions.
The Remains of the Day is a wonderful book. It is extremely well written by Ishiguro and has become a close friend. It has become a book that I return to when I want to read something of the highest quality. It is a piece of writing that I believe will pass the test of time.
Book Review: What remains of the day?
Summary: 5 Stars
Many years ago I was fond of Wodehouse's books. That very way of telling a story, dipping out a huge sequence of details with the ability of maintaining the reader's interest, marked a very characteristic style. The same style I am encountering in this Ishiguro's tale. I found very surprising how a Japanese author can acquire (absorb I think a more suitable word) the most British style, turning it into a so personal thread, in which a trip of few days becomes the occasion to flash back a whole life, spent in a screened service as a butler in a high gentry house, in which the protagonist has been having some opportunities to find himself "close to the hub of the wheel", receiving slight echoes of the main current events of the outer world: debates about Versailles Treaty, appeasement, the rise of German Nazi Party, anti-Semitism, the war. All that softened by the professional burden of the butler, by the local quarrels and arguments. So two main threads are followed by the protagonist, creating two competing tensions: the former backwards, i.e. a more and more precise depicting of lord Darlington, up to his final involvement with the Nazis, the latter the approaching to Miss Kenton's living place, along which the author, in a slightly deceiving way, builds what seem to be a desire of regain lost time. Both threads are left unresolved: you do not come to a complete knowledge of what happened to lord Darlington, and Mr. Stevens, the protagonist, finds Ms. Kenton married and waiting for the birth of a grandson. Such a literary joke is proper to the great ability of the writer, and makes a book a masterpiece not only in fiction, but also in the more subtle art of language use.Book Review: A Moving Exploration of Regret
Summary: 5 Stars
Kazuo Ishiguro once said the following of his desire to write: "I'm always trying to remind myself that while we may be very pleased with ourselves, we may one day look back with a different perspective and ask whether we may have acted out of cowardice or failure of vision. What I'm interested in is not the actual fact that my characters have done things they later regret. I'm interested in how they come to terms with it."
To me the above is an excellent description of what's going on in The Remains of the Day: Mr Stevens, a repressed butler in post-WWII England, is forced near the end of his career to reexamine his entire life. Although there are certainly a number of interesting subplots that kept me reading, the central action of the story revolves around Mr Stevens' attempts to salvage for himself some of the 'dignity' and 'greatness' and 'satisfaction' that he had, until recently, been so sure he'd achieved over the years.
Basically, I read the book as an exploration of regret, a very sad story, although it definitely had its funny moments. Often Mr Stevens will either misinterpret what's happening around him, or else he will repress his feelings to such an extent that he makes happiness impossible for himself. But whether you look at it as a very sad comedy or a very funny tragedy, I thought the book was extremely well written and worthwhile. The first couple of chapters took a bit of patience as I got to know Mr Stevens, but by the end of the story he had become one of my all-time favorite fictional characters. Overall, I'd recommend The Remains of the Day to anyone in the mood for thoughtful, character-driven fiction.
Book Review: Sheer genius
Summary: 5 Stars
Kazuo Ishiguro has not created a realistic character in Stevens but an almost mythical figure representing the ideal characteristics of a servant, or perhaps more fittingly, a vassal. Only a writer with an understanding of a rigid class-system could have wrought such a brilliant archetype. Stevens is a samurai so dedicated to his Lord (Darlington) that he has sublimated his entire life to serve him. Stevens has no romantic life--he avoids the subtle and not-so-subtle advances of the housekeeper Ms. Kenton. He reads in his spare time, but only to improve his command of the English language, to make himself a better butler. He has no political views, defaulting completely to his Lord--even reversing his views as his lord reverses himself.And in the final comparison between men--between lord and vassal, the vassal is clearly the greater man. It is Darlington's role in society to conduct diplomacy and he fails miserably, completely outmaneuvered by his counterparts in Germany. But Stevens shines! He even works through his own father's death, never betraying any emotion. Darlington dabbles in work "best left to professionals," while Stevens IS the ultimate professional.
Many people see the work as a study in tragic mistakes. But I think there is too much emphasis in Western society on individuals satisfying their own emotional, psychological, and romantic needs. I read this from a more ancient and Eastern viewpoint: Stevens is not haunted during the remains of his life but rather can be proud that he achieved perfection in his craft. The fact that the story can be interpreted in both ways makes it a piece of genius.
Book Review: A good book and with a flawed main character
Summary: 5 Stars
The Remains of the Day is not a spectacular book. But it is certainly one of the better books of the decade that I have read, or that I have heard about being good. The major flaw is the contrast between the work of realistic fiction and hypothetical nature of Stevens. This does not fit in with the rest of the book. It leaves us wanting a real person whom we don't think exists. The book, however, makes up for it in its wonderful description of the character with whom Stevens falls in love, Kensington. The author epitomizes the nature of women and gives us a character with which we sympathize and can't help routing for. His setting is well directed and his use of language with that setting is appropriately elaborate and intricate. The theme has a good structure and is doesn't fall into the romantic trap of being too benevolent in nature. Ishiguro is an up-and-coming writer, with only three other books out. His latest, The Unconsoled, some sort of jumbled Kafka tribute, is muddled and too paradoxical in nature. The other books he has written are A Pale View of the Hills and An Artist of the Floating World, and I have not read them as of yet. Ishiguro, without doubt, shows amazing promise. However, he must realize that a book cannot accurately say what it's trying to say by being both real and surreal. At that point, the book pushes over the line of believability into incredulity. If he stays away from this, and maintains a clear focus in first person while focusing on the characters, he'll write some books that will be on every high school's reading list.