Reviews - The Remains of the Day

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10.6k reviews for:

The Remains of the Day

Kazuo Ishiguro

4.08 AVERAGE

janwe's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

manyfacets's review against another edition

4.0

dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Quick thoughts:

First Ishiguro and love his use of language
Love a diary, esp with a male narrator
You ever be so busy
you’re not with your dad when he passes away even though you’re in the same house?!
Incredibly meditative, thought provoking, perfect for the end of summer

jwmortensen's review against another edition

5.0

reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

janermc's review against another edition

4.5

challenging reflective sad medium-paced

What appears to be a novel about one butler’s motor excursion through the English countryside becomes an entirely different novel when read through the words he leaves unspoken. Butler Stevens reminisces on his time serving the late Lord Darlington in a prose as constructed and precise as the silverware he polishes or the table he sets. But Stevens’s facade of self-assurance has notable cracks that break his deceivingly seamless narrative from the first chapter. Ishiguro manipulates Stevens’s language to incite contradictions and uncertainties, creating a narrative of unreliability that is built upon his repression (or perhaps conscious removal) of all emotion or feeling, thereby rendering any “truth” to his words and stories inaccessible to the reader. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the dreamlike fragmentation of Stevens's memories, and the sporadic manner in which they are told, seem to have made him the most ideal literary subject of Freudian psychoanalysis, specifically as Freud understands “the dream”: to gather up the indifferent residues of the day which turn out to be wishes or fears unacknowledged. And like the psychoanalytic subject, Stevens is perpetually divided between the truth of the past and the memories he has conveniently constructed to preserve his “dignity.” It is a story of sadness that is understated until the final few chapters, when Stevens reunites with Miss Keaton, the woman who threatens this very dignity he fights to preserve, and the prospect of their unrealized relationship is both introduced and abolished in the same page. A great book with many layers that I would recommend to anyone.