![The Remains of the Day](https://assets.literal.club/4/ckgcfx1p638320zb85ty53dn8.jpg?size=600)
The Remains of the Day
Reviews
![Photo of Ben L](https://assets.literal.club/user/fallback-avatars/avatar_16.jpg?size=100)
My favorite book. How it feels to isolate yourself from your own feelings, desires, and agency. SS tier.
![Photo of Frederik De Bosschere](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/clcg7o04g02wa0i2yav5nhnrj.jpg?size=100)
Very much enjoyed this classic. Mr Stevens is just the most endearing character.
![Photo of glória](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/clyexfe2j004d0i3ucyzc35ia.jpg?size=100)
um livro no ponto de vista do mr collins de orgulho e preconceito
![Photo of Gelaine Trinidad](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/cly80y5hk001u0i48aexe4hlh.jpg?size=100)
easily a 5-star read.
![Photo of Mat Connor](https://assets.literal.club/user/fallback-avatars/avatar_18.jpg?size=100)
The Remains of the Day is the scariest book I’ve ever read. That might seem like an odd statement to make because on the surface this novel is just about a butler calmly looking back on his life. He’s not a creepy murderous butler or secretly a ghost or anything like that. He’s a polite and committed butler, a little repressed and overly formal, but harmless and well-meaning. My case for this being a horror novel is that—unlike ghosts, monsters, and vampires—this book touches on ideas that can actually haunt you in life: lost opportunities, regret, the indignities of aging, and the feeling that you’ve either wasted your life or didn’t meet your full potential. Mr Stevens, the butler protagonist, looks back on his life and slowly realizes that he missed many opportunities to break out of his comfort zone and lead a more fulfilling, happier life. A good book club discussion would be to ask the participants if they felt the ending was hopeful or hopeless. The right answer is probably a bit of both, but I bet the answers would tell a lot about each person and lead to an interesting discussion. I read this book during the pandemic lockdown and I remember the depressing feeling I had when I finished. I would have said then (and probably now) that Mr Stevens clearly wasted his life and that any hopeful feelings he expressed at the end is just more self delusion to help him cope with that realization. This book did leave me with a hopeful feeling though, because I made the decision there and then to be more open to new experiences, to be more willing to take risks and escape my comfort zone. I look back on the person I was when I finished that book and the person I am now and I’d make the case that this is one of the most positive, life-affirming novels I’ve ever read. Any novel that can scare you into improving your life is special. This is a novel I think everyone should read at some point. Hopefully not too early in life before you are ready to absorb its lessons, but that would still be better than reading it too late.
![Photo of elizabeth](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/clw1gcl9j01820i2x57ru0730.jpg?size=100)
I feel like I'm supposed to love this and I just didn't. The style is very restrained and the plot is so subtle, which is such an art but doesn't keep me attached. I just never looked forward to reading it.
![Photo of Sarah Sammis](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/cluknexdl00s60i2x6dwbagqf.jpg?size=100)
It took me until page 46 to really get into the book. I started and stopped the book a number of times until he really got started on his trip. Then I was hooked. Stevens's unexpected opportunity to travel gives him the time to rethink his life as a buttler, coming to the conclusion that he was probably not the great buttler he thought himself as. Much of the book is spent reexamining his relationship with Miss Kenton with whom he had a numerous differences of opinion. It's also a study at class, ethnicity and culture, specifically the encroachment of outsiders (neuveau riche Americans) on the well ordered English lifestyle.
![Photo of Kat Albanese](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/clfzwgm9b007q0j04g8jdctwg.jpg?size=100)
serene
![Photo of Adam Scharf](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/cl6pxmix9006s0hx3a026dwce.jpeg?size=100)
A masterful tone and crafted tempo. Just right. A beautiful joy.
![Photo of Apurva Chitnis](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/clt4dbhap005y0i366byq7o9k.jpg?size=100)
I saw the film adaptation of the book many years ago as a young teenager and barely understood it, and so I found it terribly boring. Many years later I've just finished listening to the audiobook, and it's incredible. A showstopper of a novel. It starts gently with a drive in the English countryside, and eventually concludes with the unravelling of the protagonist's understanding of his life and place within society. Along the way, he thinks of the role class, banter, love, loyalty and dignity played in his life. And, as usual with a Kazuo Ishiguro novel, the narrator is unreliable, so you have to carefully pick out the story from what he says. My only minor point is that sometimes the themes of the novel are too obvious, and important sections are too neatly signposted. Perhaps that's just the style of the novel, but it came as a shock to me, coming from my usual sci-fi, in which things are often more mysterious. Overall a wonderful read, strongly recommended!
![Photo of Bhargav Acharya](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/clrtozx7j032y0hz2bstc93jv.jpg?size=100)
Great book - crisp simple writing that captures the reader's attention
![Photo of Nate](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/clrbufw8802px0iwthcug5m2m.jpg?size=100)
i see myself in mr stevens and it was quite a journey too as i lived through his motoring stories and reminiscences. his development was aligned with the longing that was filled slowly and gently. realistically but gently.
![Photo of Syasya Diyana](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/clre9l1v002qi0hz26jq31px3.jpg?size=100)
This is the first book I’ve finished after months of not being able to read more than one page of any book. I am now left with an immense hallowness thinking about my remains of the day. Maybe, like the Mr Stevens, I would have to start adopting the belief that ‘evening is the best time of the day’.
![Photo of Amelia Lang](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/clr400e7e01tf0hz23wnzcuul.jpg?size=100)
this is my favourite book now. i need to sit down.
![Photo of Laura Mauler](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/clqkr0r8z009b0iwt8xp4f0w2.jpg?size=100)
The book is very subtle, and at the beginning a little slow. Give it time. The magic is in the layering, the shifting, and the repeated tiny dawnings of understanding that start the process anew. Quiet, delicate, and profound.
![Photo of Satyajeet Pal](https://assets.literal.club/user/fallback-avatars/avatar_13.jpg?size=100)
an odd style of book, lots of description of past events of a butler's life as he travels through England. lots of character development and less plot, but oddly fascinating to read.
![Photo of Will Vunderink](https://assets.literal.club/user/fallback-avatars/avatar_13.jpg?size=100)
Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day is about an English butler willfully stuck in his profession's old ways who has given himself entirely, naively, to his work. Told in the first-person as a reflection on the years he's spent serving at Darlington Hall, Stevens recounts what he considers his pursuit of greatness and dignity via his noble profession. But doubt -- about his longtime employer; about his relationship with Miss Kenton, one of the maids he supervised; about his own capabilities -- creeps in as his narrative progresses, and it becomes something much more complex than a series of reminiscences on the happy past. We learn that Lord Darlington, whom Stevens trusted entirely, fraternized with Nazis; that Miss Kenton's sometimes erratic behavior was due to her love for him, despite Stevens' blindness to it; that Stevens' devotion to his job has left room for absolutely nothing else in his life. Since we inhabit Stevens' mind for the duration of the novel, this last realization is the most jarring of all. His way of speaking and interacting with other people often make him seem robotic; it's as though the line between his human persona and his butler persona has been erased, and the butler persona has unequivocally triumphed. (He often goes so far as to refer to himself as "one" instead of "I.") It's a testament to Ishiguro's mastery -- I'm reminded of Never Let Me Go, too -- that he can so fully inhabit his character and never stray from his mode of speech. The butler's reserve, tact, understatement, and distance from emotion are maddening at times, and there's humor in Stevens' lack of common social sense, but they always feel true to his complete immersion in the butler persona. But The Remains of the Day is a very sad book. We suspect all along that Stevens' quest for greatness and dignity is doomed -- despite his high self-regard owing to brushing shoulders with supposedly great men -- because he's a butler, after all. But it's crushing to see how little Stevens is left with outside of his job. He's sacrificed his life to serve others, which is noble to a degree, but he doesn't realize the extent of his sacrifice until he is old enough to want to retire. The book isn't really about sacrifice, or obsession, or service, exactly; it's more about unwitting self-deception, a sacrifice that is all the more pathetic because it's done unknowingly. Stevens posits that "'dignity' has to do crucially with a butler's ability not to abandon the professional being he inhabits" (42). If this is the case, then he would seem to have been successful. But by the novel's end both Stevens and the reader realize that the cost of achieving his goals has been far too high.
![Photo of James Feinberg](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/cljnndp61012n0iy9dpjq160s.jpg?size=100)
Among the more agonizingly beautiful novels I have ever had the privilege of reading. Concerned above all with the deeply noble, deeply British notion of sacrifice for a cause, even if that cause is one of one’s own invention. Smolders with a passion all the more powerful for being continually smothered by English restraint.
![Photo of Lara Engle](https://assets.literal.club/user/fallback-avatars/avatar_16.jpg?size=100)
This book isn't for everyone. If I'd never seen Downton Abbey, I probably wouldn't have understood the intricacies of rank and responsibility that create some of the layers of meaning in the interactions of the staff of Darlington Hall. If I'd read this when I was younger, I wouldn't have caught the wistfulness of reminiscence. I read this at the right time with enough understanding to be able to read between the lines politically, socially, and personally. Because of that, this book is perfect. Beautiful, sentimental, and just perfect.
![Photo of Nicholas Laurie](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/cl2n6had2000x0h1l0bkj7r73.jpeg?size=100)
Really enjoyed this joint. The story is incredibly simple and then we are presented with layers of subtext via the narrators memories. The result of this is a thematic study of blind-loyalty and regret.
![Photo of altlovesbooks](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/cljpog79w013d0iy953p101ht.jpg?size=100)
"...try to make the best of what remains of my day." I really liked the author's use of an unreliable narrator in telling this wonderful story. Having to read between the lines and gauge the emotions and intentions of the people around Stevens lent another level to the book that really made it a compelling read. The entirety of the book is Stevens' musings about what it means to be a great butler, the price of duty, and how hard it really is to tell a good joke, and while the format would probably have annoyed me in any other book, the author manages to pull it off in a way that's compelling and engaging. The humorous bits sprinkled in are fantastic as well.
![Photo of Jamshid](https://assets.literal.club/user/fallback-avatars/avatar_12.jpg?size=100)
I've picked this book by random. Unfortunately, I haven't connected to the book. Maybe it is because I am not a English or time difference. Writing was really different from what I had already read. I'll probably revisit it later in my life. But for now it is not for me.
![Photo of Bi](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/cljfebika01aa0iwoe4l2bswe.jpg?size=100)
not my favourite of Ishiguro's novels but objectively a good book.
![Photo of heleen de boever](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/clgqerpoz00g00iwo1ail2msu.jpg?size=100)
Probably the best book in which nothing ever happens.
Highlights
![Photo of Aske Dørge](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/ckgmaice100000haubgr0htrc.png?size=100)
Perhaps it is indeed time I began to look at this whole matter of bantering more enthusiastically. After all, when one thinks about it, it is not such a foolish thing to indulge in – particularly if it is the case that in bantering lies the key to human warmth.
![Photo of Aske Dørge](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/ckgmaice100000haubgr0htrc.png?size=100)
The hard reality is, surely, that for the likes of you and I, there is little choice other than to leave our fate, ultimately, in the hands of those great gentlemen at the hub of this world who employ our services.
![Photo of Aske Dørge](https://assets.literal.club/user/avatar/ckgmaice100000haubgr0htrc.png?size=100)
I should cease looking back so much, that I should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of my day.