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Summary: this is an excellent book, but...
Review: ...why on earth a reader thinks this has anything to do with Japan or Japanese culture is beyond me. If the author did not have a Japanese name, that would never be said. Ishiguro has lived in the UK all his life, and was raised there from the age of five. There is not one word about Japan or Japanese culture in the entire novel. This is a wonderful - and thoroughly English - book about the distortions of memory, the burdens and joys of duty, and about love and lost opportunity.
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Summary: What remains of the day?
Review: 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.
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Summary: One of the greatest books I have read
Review: I have read a lot of books lately, including several Booker Prize winners, and this one stands out in my mind, far better than the other Booker winners I have read. It seems to characterize the spirit oif the Booker Prize, because it is a fine analysis of English culture in an age of transition from the traditional class-based, industry-fueled age of the British, to building the modern Britain after the jolt of World War II. It humanizes the character of the butler, who has in the past been used as a stereotype of tradional British culture, like Wodehouse's Jeeves, with his stiff-upper lip. The story is fascinating and the psychological conflict is subtle but powerful.
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Summary: Hyacinth Bucket¿s (Bouquet) Perfect Butler
Review: What does it mean when he denies himself to strangers and tries to pretend to be better than he is? Stevens is quite spineless, preferring external appearances (Giffen wax, being at the hub) to actual substance (being honest and honorable). He doesn't protest his employer's dismissal of the Jewish servants. He pretends that he is of the upper class at the Taylor's. The father stood up for the General, whom he didn't even like; while his son, Stevens (who liked his employer) denied that he had ever worked for Lord Darlington. What does it mean when he forsakes all emotionality? His reaction to the death of his father, to the tears of Miss Kenton, and the inability "to banter" betray an inner misanthropic self devoid of compassion. He prefers ideas of perfection (honor, dignity and greatness) to gentleness and compassion. He prefers serving a great man (in outward appearances), rather than being a great man (in his own small way - he could be more compassionate and forgiving, thus becoming a great man himself). This is reflected in the metaphor of the fake pillar. A pillar supports (like a butler supports a great man), but this pillar was fake, created for outward appearance only to imitate a way of life that is no more. He has chosen to live vicariously through his employer and has contented himself with the fantasy that he has actually had a positive impact on the course of human events. How many times in our lives do we act like Stevens? How many times do we try to act better than we are? What kind of illusions do we carry around with ourselves about honor, dignity and greatness? How many times on our jobs do we rationalize behaviors that "may be trivial in themselves" and turn a blind eye to "their larger significance"? How many times do we discount the feelings of other people? This is a heartbreaking story about making your own mistakes in life (and learning from them), rather than leaving the responsibility for your life to someone else. As Mr. Stevens learns, trying to correct the mistakes of the past or trying to make up for lost time is impossible. So many regrets, I cried too.
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Summary: Unquestioning Loyalty versus Personal Responsibility
Review: In his first three novels Kazuo Ishiguro reveals his characters with care and subtlety through their recollections of events long past. These memories are often fragmented, sometimes hazy, sometimes simply untrustworthy. Some characters willingly explore old memories for answers, while others show less interest in introspection. All three stories effectively employ a first person narrative style. "It is possible that my memory of these events will have grown hazy with time, that things did not happen in quite the way they come back to me today." (A Pale View of Hills) "Did Miyake really say all this to me that afternoon? Perhaps I am getting his words confused with the sort of thing that Suichi will come out and say." (An Artist of the Floating World) "But I see I am becoming preoccupied with these memories and this is perhaps a bit foolish." (The Remains of the Day) Ishiguro shifts the timeline back and forth as individual memories, often triggered by other memories, are recalled. These recollections yield incomplete answers, indications, and vague hints. Like Ishiguro's characters, we readers find ourselves becoming interpreters searching for answers in old memories. In "The Remains of the Day" Ishiguro does not give us the traditional, humorous caricature of an English butler, but a convincing and disturbing portrait of a flawed individual. Stevens held himself to high standards and principles, and continually strived to exhibit those characteristics that define a great butler. And yet, throughout his years at Darlington Hall, he used his unquestioning loyaty and commitment to Lord Darlington as a shield from personal responsibility. He abdicated personal choice, avoided questioning Lord Darlington's actions, and refrained from close personal relationships. We meet Stevens late in his career. Lord Darlington is no longer alive. England and her Allies have defeated Germany. Stevens still has much pride in his years of service to a great man, but unwittingly, almost unwillingly, he begins to question whether his service and devotion were misdirected, even wrong. On occasion, Stevens even finds himself unaccountably straying from the truth whenever uncomfortale questions arise concerning Lord Darlington's German sympathy during the thirties. At the same time unsettling memories surface regarding a house keeper, a Miss Kenton, that left Darlington Hall many years ago. We recognize, but Stevens seemingly fails to do so, that Miss Kenton was offering her love. Stevens, Lord Darlington, and Miss Kenton, to a lesser degree, all made mistakes that profoundly influenced thier lives and the lives of others. Surprisingly, Ishiguro shows little interest in why his characters made mistakes in the past. His focus is clearly on how they come to recognize past mistakes and how they react to these uncomfortable discoveries. With each rereading of his novels my admiration increases for the remarkable skill and talent of Kazuo Ishiguro. He is undoubtably one of the great writers of our time. I highly recommend this extraordinary novel. I envy those that have yet to encounter "The Remains of the Day" for the first time.
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Summary: Lovely, contemporary
Review: 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.
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Summary: Better than the movie
Review: I like Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins as much as anyone, but the book is far more satisfying than the movie. For one, given the impressionist technique used to advance the narrative, learning the truth about Lord Darlington is a far more satisfying experience when reading the book than seeing the movie. It is only then that the reader is alert to the fact that everything he had been told is warped by the hero's perspective-he cannot admit to us or himself that he has given his life to an unjust cause. Rather than spoil anything else, I will leave it at that. Read the book, before seeing the movie, you will not be sorry.
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Summary: Quietly Intense
Review: Who would think that a story about a stodgy British butler could be a great read? But, this is exactly what "Remains of the Day" is. The book has a remarkable, quiet intensity
You can find details of the story in the other reviews. I will say that the serious reader will find many important themes in "Remains"; self-deception, love, history, racism, family, politics, and war. The story has two of the most intense scenes I've ever read, each having to do with Steven's persuit to be the very best butler he can be.
"Remains of the Day" is my favorite story of all time. The book is much better than the movie, but you can't go wrong with anything starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson! But, by all means, READ THIS BOOK!
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Summary: The Butler Did It
Review: The Remains of the Day
By Kazuo Ishiguro
Faber and Faber, 1989.
"It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days."
Thus, Kazuo Ishiguro begins Mr Stevens' six-day journey to Cornwall in 1956 to reclaim the services of Miss Kenton, lost to both his employer and himself some twenty years before. Set in the 1930s at Darlington Hall, a secluded mansion in the romantic, English countryside, The Remains of the Day is a delicate story told by a masterful storyteller of the friendship between Mr Stevens and Miss Kenton, the butler and the housekeeper, and the love that grows between them and lasts for the rest of their lives.
Set against the backdrop of the quiet beauty and elegance of the fading world of English aristocracy, The Remains of the Day won the Booker Prize in 1989. It highlights Ishiguro's gift for poignant character studies of masculinity that continues with Mr Ryder in The Unconsoled (1995).
Mr Stevens is the perfect, English butler, studious and analytical, sensitive and diplomatic, with all the refined elegance of a gentleman's gentleman. But Mr Stevens is also the flawed man of Shakespearian tragedy. Since the most important thing in his life is always the practice of his profession, he is oblivious to the world around him. He entertains no opinion about the covert dinners at Darlington Hall with Germans and other heads of Europe in the lead up to WWII and is ignorant of his own repressed love for Miss Kenton. Mr Stevens' identity is subsumed by his role as butler.
During the course of his six-day journey, Stevens takes us into his confidence as he investigates, at some length, the precise definition of "dignity" and further regales the reader with an account of his efforts to perfect the newly required "art of bantering". He embarks upon an analysis of "what" makes a great butler: good accent, impeccable command of language, general knowledge of a wide variety of topics including "newt-mating", and the ability to ensure there are "no discernable traces left" of any "recent occurrence", such as a tiger shot while "languishing beneath the dining table", by the time "dinner is served". Indeed, the unforseen event of his own father's death whilst both are on duty at an auspicious occasion at Darlington Hall is a particularly poignant case in point.
The Remains of the Day is a book you will either savour like a long-deserved cup of English Breakfast or find infuriating and tedious from first drop to last. If the offer of six days on the road with Mr Stevens would send you rushing for your overcrowded appointment diary, then don't pick up The Remains of the Day, because The Remains of the Day is Mr Stevens. However, the reader who takes the time to slow to the rhythm of Stevens' thoughts, speech, and lifestyle will likely revisit the journey many times.
As a love story, The Remains of the Day stands alone, embracing the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, without the Italian flavour of violent emotion, the setting of Wuthering Heights, with none of the brooding despair, and the intimate, masculine narration of Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, without the adolescent frankness. Told with grace and subtlety, Kazuo Ishiguro's simple, delicate story is, most of all, like a haiku poem.
The book is written in first person narrative so the reader is privy to little more than Mr Stevens will himself admit. But understanding the narrator is the key to unlocking the forbidden romance. Kazuro describes their love by what he does not say, telling the story by withholding information in a way that articulates the repressed emotion of the butler and is reflected in the restrained quality of dialogue, which is truly the highlight of the book. We learn to read between the heavy, velvet drapes, behind the gleaming silver, and under the crisp, starched doilies to uncover a romance that is unspoken, not only to the reader but also to the love object and even the narrator himself.
The dialogue arises in intimate moments shared in close, personal spaces like Mr Stevens's private pantry and the cosy warmth of Miss Kenton's parlour. Under the guise of "professional communication", they playfully tease and tantalise each other and the reader, are tentative and hesitant in their inquiry of each other's motives, and sometimes suffer hurt and withdrawal.
However, The Remains of the Day transgresses romance conventions in significant ways: the hero and heroine are not young and beautiful, the story is told by the male character, and the lovers do not openly speak their love, but, if romance is "about the sizzle and not the steak", then this is a story of singularly restrained passion and truly enduring love.
The Remains of the Day will not be rushed and neither will Mr Stevens. I maintain every hope that one day Mr Stevens will find himself in the happy position in which he is able, at last, to declare his honourable intentions and offer Miss Kenton, with much preamble, a long-awaited proposal of the arrangement commonly known in the romance genre as marriage, though at such time as this may occur, children, of course, will be entirely out of the question.
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Summary: A Comfortable Old Friend, A Review of The Remains of the Day
Review: 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.
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