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Loading... The Remains of the Dayby Kazuo Ishiguro
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. A dedicated butler quietly reminisces about his lifelong devotion to his job and the choices he has made. The result is a moving, wise book filled with grace and subtlety. It is brilliantly crafted, and most definitely recommended. (  )1   akeela | Dec 23, 2009 |  I actually found this book to be rather boring. I was glad when I finished. I did like the excellent portrayal of the perfect English butler -- stiff upper lip and all -- but throughout the book, I couldn't wait for him to actually reach Miss Kenton, and then, when he did, it was quite a letdown. I guess that was the point of the book, though. (  ) dkhiggin | Dec 13, 2009 | Surprised me a lot. Lovely and sad. (  )1 ekebivibeke | Dec 13, 2009 | I liked this book more than I thought I would. I had to read it for school and as I have previously read Never Let Me Go by the same author and hated it I was sceptical to this one. But I liked the story telling of it. How the narrator went back and forth in time to give us glimpse of what was to come and what had been. I also liked the more formal language that the author had used, it set the tone very well. (  ) Zommbie1 | Dec 12, 2009 | Stevens, the butler, has served Lord Darlington for 30+ years. through two World Wars. When Darlington passes away, the estate is sold to an American, Mr. Farraday. Farraday suggests Stevens take a few days and motor around England. It's 1956. Stevens decides to accept the offer and sets off to meet Ms. Kenton, a housekeeper who worked at the estate 20 years earlier. A letter he recently received hinted she might be seeking a return to Darlington House. As Stevens motors through the country, he has for the first time in decades, time to reminisce, to mull over his past and that of Darlington and Ms. Kenton. He thinks of Darlington's efforts, after WWI, to ease the debt burden inflicted on the losing Germany. He thinks about the powerful figures who visited and hopes that he, Stevens, might have played a small part in changing history by being a great butler. But he also sees what he's missed. (Or does he? That's the question.) Ishiguro has created a figure, Stevens, and kept true to him throughout the novel. He talks and acts just like a butler. Ishiguro raises so many questions about life, dignity, causes, the commoner vs. the lords, the amateurs vs. the professionals. Lord Darlington was manipulated by the Nazi regime pre-WWII yet Stevens seems to have no opinion on it. True to his master. There is so much to discuss and ponder in this award winning book (Booker Award, 1989), that there is no space to discuss it all. I highly recommend everyone read it. (  )1 EdGoldberg | Dec 7, 2009 | 
 The Remains of the Day is too much a roman à thèse, and a judgmental one besides. Compared to his astounding narrative sophistication, Ishiguro's message seems quite banal: Be less Japanese, less bent on dignity, less false to yourself and others, less restrained and controlled. The irony is that it is precisely Ishiguro's beautiful restraint and control that one admires, and, in the case of the last novel [The Remains of the Day], his nerve in setting up such a high-wire act for himself.  Kazuo Ishiguro's tonal control of Stevens' repressive yet continually reverberating first-person voice is dazzling. So is his ability to present the butler from every point on the compass: with affectionate humor, tart irony, criticism, compassion and full understanding. It is remarkable, too, that as we read along in this strikingly original novel, we continue to think not only about the old butler, but about his country, its politics and its culture.
Amazon.com (ISBN 0679731725, Paperback)The novel's narrator, Stevens, is a perfect English butler who tries to give his narrow existence form and meaning through the self-effacing, almost mystical practice of his profession. In a career that spans the second World War, Stevens is oblivious of the real life that goes on around him -- oblivious, for instance, of the fact that his aristocrat employer is a Nazi sympathizer. Still, there are even larger matters at stake in this heartbreaking, pitch-perfect novel -- namely, Stevens' own ability to allow some bit of life-affirming love into his tightly repressed existence.(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:22 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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