Remains of the Day – a Review

Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro connects with you at different levels: as the story of a British butler who lived through exciting times; as the recollection about a man misunderstood man; as a reflection on a profession which probably doesn’t survive today at least not in the same shape and form (as in the 20s to 50s); a deliberation over professional values that are quite universal. But, at its heart, Remains of the Day is about England. When I was reading the book, I was surprised that I never read any book review mention this point. Maybe some did but I haven’t come across in the many reviews of this famous book I read before I read the book. And yet, through every page England leapt out at me. English cultural nuances, customs, beliefs, politics of the time, countryside, countryfolks and an England of war years slowly disappearing (its values, landscape, people, social order) to make way for an England of post war years.

 

The novel has the conciseness of any Kazuo Ishiguro novel – a tight plot, few characters, very few plot digressions. And within the limited frame, it explores plethora of issues, deals with multiple layers (immediate and broader themes, reality versus collective memory). The novel has a languishing feel to it, yet it never feels slow: there is always an undercurrent, tautness, a tension about how an unfolding situation will finally conclude. I guess this is signature Ishiguro.  Artist of the Floating World, which also had a very sprawling narrative canvas, had a similar dual feeling to it, an underlying tension without compromising on the charms of a reflective novel.

The year is 1956 and Stevens, an aging butler, is recollecting the years he spent serving Lord Darlington as a butler. The years were tumultuous, in between the 1^st and 2^nd World Wars. The Treaty of Versailles has crippled German economy through reparations and Nazism is on the rise. Lord Darlington, a Nazi sympathizer and a political activist of sorts, arranges meetings between high- ranking German officers and leading politicians from other European countries at his mansion to help the ‘German cause’. Stevens is a mute spectator to these meetings where things that are reshaping Europe are discussed. His dedication to the finer points of butlery obscures him to the events of global consequences unfolding before him.

However, in 1956, while journeying to the countryside of England many years after Lord Darlington is dead and now infamously remembered as a Nazi sympathizer, thanks to newspaper reports, Stevens struggles to reconcile what people he meets during the journey say about his former employer and how he remembers Lord Darlington, as a noble and kind person.

This was my fifth Ishiguro novel and each one only whips up my appetite for more.