Kazuo Ishiguro

*Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel Klara and the Sun is now available to preorder* From the Nobel Prize-winning author of Never Let Me Go Winner of the Booker Prize ONE OF THE BBC'S '100 NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD' A contemporary classic, The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's beautiful and haunting evocation of life between the wars in a Great English House. In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on a leisurely holiday that will take him deep into the English countryside and into his past.

The Remains of the Day

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, here is the universally acclaimed novel—winner of the Booker Prize and the basis for an award-winning film. This is Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly compelling portrait of Stevens, the perfect butler, and of his fading, insular world in post-World War II England. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the "great gentleman," Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's "greatness," and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.

Aske Dørge

Sarah Sammis

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.

Kazuo Ishiguro's Booker Prize-winning masterpiece became an international bestseller on publication, was adapted into an award-winning film, and has since come to be regarded as a modern classic. The Remains of the Day is a spellbinding portrayal of a vanished way of life and a haunting meditation on the high cost of duty. It is also one of the most subtle, sad and humorous love stories ever written. It is the summer of 1956, when Stevens, a man who has dedicated himself to his career as a perfect butler in the one-time great house of Darlington Hall, sets off on a holiday that will take him deep into the English countryside and, unexpectedly, into his own past, especially his friendship with the housekeeper, Miss Kenton. As memories surface of his lifetime "in service" to Lord Darlington, and of his life between the wars, when the fate of the continent seemed to lie in the hands of a few men, he finds himself confronting the dark undercurrent beneath the carefully run world of his employer.

A Novel

Kat Albanese

A masterful tone and crafted tempo. Just right. A beautiful joy. 

Adam Scharf

Apurva Chitnis

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!

Bhargav Acharya

Great book - crisp simple writing that captures the reader's attention

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. 

Nate

Syasya Diyana 

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’.

Amelia Lang 

this is my favourite book now. i need to sit down.

Laura Mauler

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.

Satyajeet Pal

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.

The remains of the day

Will Vunderink

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.

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. 

James Feinberg

Lara Engle

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.

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. 

Nicholas Laurie

altlovesbooks

"...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.

Jamshid

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.

'After all what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?'In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on a leisurely holiday that will take him deep into the English countryside and into his past...A contemporary classic, The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's beautiful and haunting evocation of life between the wars in a Great English House, of lost causes and lost love.The Remains of the Day is now available as a Faber Modern Classics edition.

not my favourite of Ishiguro's novels but objectively a good book.

heleen de boever

Probably the best book in which nothing ever happens.

Hernando

Remains of the Day

Vilandra

I admit it was not what I expected. But it was a relaxing read, and I enjoyed Stevens’ trip and reminisces. It is a book you have to take as a whole to see what it is really about. It’s about thoughts, not actions.

The writing style and the thought process of the main character are my favourite part of the book.

Fatin Allen

Ioana Kardos

From the very beginning, I was set on the idea that I must like the book, since Never Let Me Go surprised me by its originality, the author's imagination did quite a good joob as I couldn't leave the book until I finished it. I liked reading The Remains Of The Day because history and fiction are so well interwoven, introducing the reader in the post WWI of Great Britain. The story follows the butler's memoirs of certain events he witnessed, among which there was a conference that was held at Darlington House in 1923, where important political leaders gathered to discuss the repercussions the Versailles Treaty was having on Germans. 
Throughout the book, Stevens reminded me of the butler from Downtown Abbey: the codes of behaviour, the careful choice of words, the intricate conventions of conversation and witticism are much alike. Stevens is not prone to make exaggerate statements, he is quite careful with the meaning of concepts such as 'dignity' and how it is best observed only in unexpected and tensed situations. There is no room for incongroussness in a butler's world, perfection is the key to the requirements of his job.

While reading the novel, I kept asking myself: Why does our society lack what they had? Even though they were servants, they had dignity, they were truly interested in having peace, freedom, not interfering in each other's business and speaking the truth.This is a book about love, regrets, missed oportunities. The protagonist pays heed to details, and the end overwhelmed me with nostalgia, it made me realize one has to do something to keep one's beloved around, it made me appreciate those around me more and care less for other's expectations. The protagonist is filled with melancholy at the end of his journey, when he finally got to see her: “And you get to thinking about a different life, a better life you might have had. For instance, I get to thinking about a life I may have had with you, Mr Stevens. And I suppose that’s when I get angry over some trivial little thing and leave. But each time I do so, I realize before long – my rightful place is with my husband. After all, there’s no turning back the clock now. One can’t be forever dwelling on what might have been. One should realize one has as good as most, perhaps better, and be grateful.” (197)

Prashanth Srivatsa

The Remains of the Day is an astonishing tale of a butler on the quest to answer the meaning of dignity. What starts off in the bucolic landscape of pre-World War II England, coursing through its narrow lanes flanked by extensive, quiet moors, tall hedges and manors, soon diverts to the past. There, in the mansion of Lord Darlington, Ishiguro investigates and answers the question in a charming, aristocratic essence, where even the words feel disciplined and tense. It is hard to sympathize with the unyielding loyalty of Stevens the butler, who, like his father, marks the necessity of service above all morality. Which, despite its annoyance, was what made this a story worth remembering. Stevens oversees the House of Darlington as it plays host to a bunch of Nazi sympathizers and English overlords, while reactions are subtly played out in the shadows were Stevens stands holding the remains of a wine bottle, waiting to serve. It is this underplaying of the vitality of the meetings between these politically suspect people - meetings that influenced or helped ignite World War II, while Stevens stands guard at the door, unerring in his loyalty to serve his master, suppressing his romances, his forced Antisemitism and his modest determination to join the ranks of Great Butlers - that makes Remains of the Day a good book.

It's more than consolation then, that Stevens decides to look forward to the remainder of his days (here comes the title) with not just the same level of dignity, but also with a bit of bantering that could perhaps lever his morality up, and hopefully, prevent another World War.

Exquisitely poignant, this book broke my heart and made me question the way I live my life. 

The Remains of the Day

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