Reviews

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

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mcloonejack's review against another edition

5.0

On its surface, this is not the kind of book I’m pre-disposed to like: the lives of the affluent British a la Downton Abbey, etc. has never particularly appealed to me. But Ishiguro’s deft hand turns this into a truly special novel, most spectacularly in his handling of stream-of-consciousness writing.

Stevens, as a narrator, would come off as just frustrating if not written with the care Ishiguro uses. Obsessed with his own morality, proper to the point of aloofness, deeper in his own head than every teen replaying failed interactions with bullies or potential romantic partners, and, of course, a remarkably unreliable narrator. But Ishiguro uses all of these qualities to craft an intricate story, one that interweaves looks at how we rationalize we were righteous in our past mistakes (if we consider them mistakes at all), how we use the thrust of our day-to-day to ignore broader implications of our lives that require introspection, the pressures foisted upon the working class by elites (and the ways the working class can developed generational learned behaviors to not just accept but crave it, despite a core of it being demeaning) and oh not to mention commentary on being a bystander and witness to horrific moments and figures of the geopolitical moments in history and doing nothing. That’s not everything, and it’s only 250ish pages!

It would be a failure to not mention that there are also moments of this book that are hilarious, including Stevens’ failed attempts to give a sex talk to a 20something son of a Duke and his other various incredibly wrong reads of situations.

This was my first Ishiguro work, and I greatly look forward to reading more.