Stevens, butler to Lord Darlington in Ishiguro’s pre-WW2 portrait of England narrates his experiences in this first person narrative. Some years later, on a road trip to visit a former colleague, the then Miss Renton, housekeeper, Stevens meditates on his professional life of service, when his only aim was to maintain the highest standards. His voice is unfailingly reserved, measured, restrained and his personal and professional standards, exacting.
But set against the elegance and appearance of refinement, formality and sophistication, many ugly truths emerge about that period in England’s history. They are made even more ugly by the genius of Ishiguro’s creation and use of Stevens’ dignified voice and stalwart character. So remote is he from any personal involvement or insights, that he never shares his first name with us, and no other character ever uses it. Despite this, we have tremendous sympathy for this unreliable narrator.
Thank you to #NetGalley and #Faber for my digital download.

This book is absolutely wonderful. I was instantly transported to another time and was totally enveloped in Steven's narrative. The loyalty he displayed to his ex employer was admirable even though he clearly had some doubts as to the true situation. Beautifully written throughout I completed this book in one day as I couldn't bear to abandon it.

I was craving a book that would completely take me away from the world and this was exactly it. I loved getting to know Stevens and felt as though I was just reading his secret diary. I love Ishiguro's lyrical writing and this tale did not disappoint.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This is one of the most satisfying, atmospheric and profoundly moving rereads for me, Kazuo Ishiguro's 1989 Booker Prize winner, a perceptive, inspired character study of a retiring butler, Stevens, and through him, the insightful penetration of a turbulent period of British history, detailing a bygone era, its class structures, a changing country losing its empire and way of life. Stevens embodies a rigidity and formality that seems all too absurd in our modern times, obsessive about and putting great store on the concept of dignity, with a overriding sense of duty, repressed, an iron loyalty and putting an all encompassing trust in Lord Darlington that is not deserved. As he reflects back on his life, it slowly begins to seeps through what is not overt, his regrets, his fear of intimacy, his unrealised feelings for the housekeeper, Miss Kenton, the inner pain, loneliness and the heartbreak.

With understated brilliance and lyricism, Ishiguro writes a subtly nuanced and poignant novel of uncommon emotional depth, of a life unlived, devoid of love, underlining all that could have been. This has been a wonderful reread, beautifully written historical fiction, and if you have yet to read it, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Many thanks to Faber and Faber.

My thanks to the publishers for a review copy of this story by the well decorated British Japanese author, Kazuo Ishiguro. The butler of Darlington Hall narrates events which straddle the Second World War, as he sees them, forced into the repressive straight jacket of his own moral code, which revolves around dignity. I have only read one other book by Ishiguro - the Wind Up Bird Chronicle - and I just could not get on with it. So I was surprised to find I enjoyed this book much more and it is worth a read.

It is a very funny book in an excruciatingly sad sort of way. It has several really memorable scenes, such as the international ‘conference’ held at the Hall where our narrator enjoys one of his finest hours buffeted between a dying father, an important French diplomat complaining about his feet and an aristocratic boy in need of basic sex education. There is comedy too in the village where he is taken for the lord and not a butler on holiday and, of course, in the relations he describes over the years with ‘Miss Kenton’, erstwhile housekeeper at the Hall, who has been married tumultuously to somebody else for the past 20 years.

Ishiguro picks out with the clarity of an outsider the propensity of the English aristocracy to sympathise with the Nazis. Whether this was through amateur naïveté or something more sinister is more open to question than we see here, but it’s welcome for this truth to appear in fiction anyway.

Much as I enjoyed my time with Stevens, the butler, and his moments of triumph, I do feel is something missing about him. He is just a bit too obsessed with his moral code to be an English butler. It’s not banter he lacks, but guile. It’s the ‘felt life’ which is missing.

And of course, this is not surprising, since the author arrived on these shores in 1960, long after the events here described and when butlers, great or not, were dying out. It remains a question, though, why he doesn’t write more about what he does know first hand. I think he would be good at it.

Remains of the Day is a novel that tells a story within a story. It is about the world, women, men, as well as the master and the servant; but manages to fit more in between. There is a “dignified” butler named Stevens in the lead role. Stevens is an intriguing character in every way. I should read Ishiguro just because he can create such a character.

The book feels like you are reading Stevens’ diary or having a long conversation with him. After a while, this character becomes flesh and bones, and you find yourself listening carefully to the butler of the mansion. This butler talks about fascism, regrets, love of duty, loyalty, and even how the world is ruled. If you are reading Ishiguro for the first time, I think it might be a good choice.

Honestly one of the most compelling books I have ever read. The relationship between Stevens and Miss Kenton is complicated on so many levels and utterly fascinating.

** Mild spoilers **

What I find interesting about this book is that it gives moral weight to behaviours that are usually judged on different systems of calibration. Most of the positive reviews I've seen discuss this as being about a man whose failure to connect with people, who turns his face from love in his pursuit of an ideal of duty, something he calls 'dignity', finally is faced with a life wasted, unlived and full of melancholy and regret.

All of this is true, but what enriches this somewhat clichéd trope is the fact that Stevens unwittingly pledges himself to the support of Nazi fascism in enabling and servicing Darlington's project, and that his turning away from human connections parallels a turning away from personal and political responsibility. His 'dignity' is actually an abdication of accountability: he says, and truly believes, that it's not his place to question Darlington's orders that he sack two housemaids simply because they are Jewish, even though he admits he is himself disturbed by this action. He becomes an avatar of the 'good' person who stands by and follows orders which is all that is needed for wrong things to happen.

'Dignity' is a word which echoes throughout this short text and is given different definitions: from Stevens' "I suspect it comes down to not removing one's clothing in public" (i.e. all that traditional masculinised stiff upper lip stuff of not revealing oneself with sincerity and authenticity) to the words of working-class activist Harry Smith who claims dignity is bound up with exercising one's democratic rights: "we've all got strong opinions here, and it's our responsibility to get them heard".

Stevens is in thrall to hierarchical systems of belief that privilege tradition and power: he trusts implicitly and unquestioningly his social betters whether Lord Darlington, his master, or the roll-call of dignitaries who come to dine with him from Ribbentrop to Churchill. For all his weaknesses, he is also a strange figure of monstrous egoism and takes pride in his 'dignity' which encompasses the inhumane. There's a lovely scene where he congratulates himself on his quiet triumph as he stands outside two closed doors: behind one is a meeting where Ribbentrop is trying to persuade Churchill and the king to come to Germany to meet Hitler with the implied purpose of becoming allies in the coming war; behind the other is a crying woman who wants the comfort and love that Stevens withholds.

For all the interesting stuff, I found it hard to believe in Stevens as a character who is so obtuse, not just emotionally illiterate but also politically so. And while I think we're supposed to find him endearing (his unconscious tears, say, when he abandons his dying father for serving at dinner), I didn't. I also couldn't believe for a minute that a woman could fall in love with such a tightly-wound and rigidly controlled man.

On top of that Ishiguro's writing, elegant as ever, feels very obvious as if he can't quite trust us to 'get' his narrative, and the attempts at humour feel over-done and consequently fall flat: Stevens' heavy-handed attempts to teach himself how to banter; the scene where he's supposed to explain 'the birds and the bees', as the text calls it, to a 23-year old guest.

All the same, the entangling of a deep moral imperative with a more conventional story of emotional meagreness makes this definitely worth reading.

Wow! This was refreshing. Told from the point of view of a 1950s butler, "The Remains of the Day" is suitably stiff and formal in its presentation, but has so much heart in it. The writing is flawless. The story, tone, language, and characters are one heck of a combination. This is probably a book that needs to be reread several times to pick up all the nuances, and I'm now longing for a dog-eared paperback copy.

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley. This review was written voluntarily and is entirely my own, unbiased, opinion.

...and now I am sad.
This hit me harder than expected.

I find it impossible hard to believe that this book was written by Kazuo Ishiguro and not Mr. Stevens. The thing is, by the end, I believed in Mr. Stevens' existence...
Okay, it might sound odd but that's just how good this novel is. It made me nostalgic for something I have never known. I was overwhelmed by sadness and regret on behalf of Mr. Stevens.
Regardless of its author, it is a beautifully written story. The narrative takes us back to certain pivotal moments of Mr. Stevens' time at Darlington Hall. Through these glimpses we gain a vivid impression of Mr. Stevens. The other characters are just as nuanced and believable as the narrator himself. As Mr. Stevens' looks back on his years of service, I became acquainted with him. He keeps back quite a lot, especially when it comes to his innermost feelings, and that made him all the more realistic.
This is a poignant and heart-rendering character study that was perfect for a melancholic soul like mine.