Customer Reviews

The Remains of the Day

5 star:		(77)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This was the best contemporary book that I read as part of my English degree at university. It is about duty, human relations, love, and fear of our emotions.

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.

This novel is so heartbreakingly beautiful I get shivers even thinking about it. I loved it on so many levels: as a portrait of upper-class England between the wars, as a subtle tale of unrequited love, as an examination of regret at the end of one's life. It's absolutely a must-read.

After immersing myself in two of Ishiguro's masterpieces lately, Never Let Me Go and the Artist of the Floating World, I realized I had never read this book, even though one of my favorite movies was based on it.

Yet again, Ishiguro makes use of the fickle processes of memory recall, giving his book a very familiar and organic feel. Events unfold like yellowed notes dropping haphazardly from old books as one pulls them from their shelves on a lazy afternoon.

James Stevens, butler to Darlington Hall, is on a slow motor-trip towards the West country hoping for a second chance to make up for a life wasted on misplaced trust. During this trip he reminisces on the events up to that point and comes to realize that striving to be "possessed of a dignity in keeping with one's position" entailed sacrifices much greater than anticipated. At the same time, the rewards for this accomplishment are very conditional.

The book is mesmerizing and beautiful, the characters deep, their motives familiar and their decisions universally understood. Kazuo Ishiguro not only recreated the 1930's atmosphere but also a timeless character that embodies the essence of dignity - and exemplifies the irrevocable consequences of misplaced loyalty.

A MASTERPIECE.

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!

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.

Sometimes I think there can't be a more perfect novel than "The Remains of the Day." I am a great fan of Kazuo Ishiguro and have read all of his books, and while all of them are superb and all are literature of the highest order, "The Remains of the Day" is certainly his very best.

"The Remains of the Day" is the story of Stevens, the perfect English butler and of how his devotion to duty and his negation of emotion virtually annihilates his sense of self.

Stevens is "in service" at Darlington Hall, the home of Lord Darlington during the years between World War I and World War II. Complications arise for Stevens when he finds he must replace two members of the staff at Darlington...a housekeeper and an under-butler.

...

"The Remains of theDay" is a masterpiece in many ways, not the least of which is subtlety. We know Stevens feels pain, we know he feels love, and we can read, in between Ishiguro's perfectly chosen, precise words, Stevens' struggle to express that which he feels so deeply.

...

If you haven't read "The Remains of the Day" or seen the movie, you may get the idea that this is a very depressing book, indeed. It is not. It is quiet and understated and ultimately, profoundly sad, but it does its moments of humor, though they, too, are masterpieces of understatement. One of the most typical involves a Chinese figure that causes a minor battle of wills between Stevens and Miss Kenton.

All of Kazuo Ishiguro's books raise many more questions than they answer (a mark of a truly superlative book) and "The Remains of the Day" is no exception. Are Stevens and Miss Kenton merely victims of their occupations and the times in which they live or does Stevens possess some flaw of character, a flaw that permits him to be the perfect English butler but a less than perfect man? Each reader will have to draw his or her own conclusions, but I can guarantee one thing: no one who reads this book will come away from it unchanged. Indeed, most will come away heartbroken.

Kazuo Ishiguro's writing in "Remains" is as near to perfection as I think it is possible for an author to come. Stevens, the detached-yet-not-so-detached English butler, deserves a place among literature's greatest first-person narrators; it is impossible not to be moved by his enduring loyalty, his quiet but desperate need to justify his employer's actions, his inability to shed the code of gentility bred into him by his father and by his unique social position, and his longing to always do and say and think and feel the "right thing." It is Ishiguro's flawless writing that makes all of this come through clearly, cleanly, and without the need for literary bells and whistles. "Remains" is the epitome of "restrained" writing and the plot--which weaves in and out of time, as Stevens dissembles and eventually faces the truth about himself and his past--is magnificent. Needless to say, I highly recommend this book.

"Remains of the Day" is an incredibly understated novel. Like an Ang Lee film, every page is bursting with passion and restraint. Stevens is a deeply emotional, romantic person who suppresses every aspect of his "self" in a bid to achieve "dignity in keeping with his position." This book is a study of the idea of public and private selves, as seen through the lenses of the cultures of Japan (the author) and Great Britain (the setting).

There are several stories being told here; the social-political drama of the Nazis and Lord Darlington, the fading class system of Great Britain after WWII, and the subtle romance of Stevens and Mrs. Kenton. The first two stories and interesting on a historical level as well as a character level. There is a sadness to Lord Darlington and to the occupants of Darlington Hall who feel a treasured way of life slipping from their fingers.

The third story, of Stevens and Mrs. Kenton, is deep and full of heartbreak. Highly recommended.

The word dignity that concerns Stevens so in this novel comes from the latin dignitas < dignus, worthy. This novel by Ishiguro is worthy of the Booker prize it recieved and much praise from all quarters. Like his previous two novels there is a strong theme here of realization of having backed the wrong horse ,so to speak, and how to proceed from there. This, Ishiguro's third effort, reaches masterpiece quality in form, prose, restraint, and narrative. A previous reviewer's comparison to Chekhov is very apt. Steven's the samurai slash english gentry butler of Darlington hall has spent his life serving what he thought was a great man, Lord Darlington. Darlington , it turns out was an unwitting pawn of the Nazi's in diplomacy between Nazi Germany and England. Steven's realizes this along with his missed romantic chances in his past and it breaks his heart. He must decide a worthy way to spend the remains of his day. Stevens although not a perfect human is a refreshing literary character with his selfless devotion, civility, and ideals. His struggle to learn how to banter and joke is the most touching and humorous part of the book. This is a modern day classic!