The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Publisher: Faber and Faber; New edition (3 Mar 2005)
ISBN: 978-0571225385
I’m finding it hard to summarise The Remains of the Day. The trouble is as a reader and a writer; it didn’t fulfil either of those needs for me. The story centres on Stevens a butler of the ‘old’ sort. The last of his kind I suppose. The book is told through him and him alone as he takes a trip around the English countryside on the way to visit an ex-housekeeper whom I guess he wishes would return.
The book has little plot in itself, and the conflict (experienced by Stevens) is one which interferes with his duty, his prime and only – it appears- drive in life. Even when his father is dying, he continues with his duties and he continues to miss the emotional signals from Miss Kenton (the housekeeper) who eventually leaves to get married to someone else.
I know, I know this is a ‘literary’ book with very honourable awards, but that doesn’t always mean that it is a good read. One with a beginning, middle and end with living, colourful characters. Sometimes as a writer, I don’t read as a reader, and I fear that this is the case with this book. It’s not a long tale and not unpleasant, it just didn’t engage me totally. I know I shall be told that I missed the message but frankly, that’s not my problem. I shall try another book by Ishiguro, just to see what else he has been inspired to write so it hasn’t put me off. Well you can’t win them all the time and it shows the ‘fickle’ nature of writing. It’s hard to write for everyone and this book wasn’t written for me.
About the Author:
Kazuo Ishiguro is a Japanese-British author and has been nominated several times for the Booker Prize. He is listed by The Times as one of the best 50 Writers since 1945
Readability Rating: It’s hard to score, it wasn’t a 10 in terms of impact but it wasn’t hard to read.
Recommendation: Sure, check it out; it doesn’t take long to read
I`m afraid I couldn`t agree less. Just getting to the end of it and can`t wait to get back to it this evening, even though I know how it ends. I`ve seen the film with Anthony Hopkins, who plays the part of Stevens perfectly.
ReplyDeleteAs a book it has it all: beuatiful writing, social comment set against dramatic political issues and a very subtle love-story.
No,for most readers it probably doesn`t have a plot which is "racy" enough and maybe there is an overdose of tell-not-show, but I didn`t find it boring for one minute.
For me a page-turner which I shall read again.
Thanks for commenting and sharing your experience. It just goes to show as I said, it's really hard for a writer to get it right for some readers, you can't please all folk all of the time! But I will read another by this author and write about it here...
ReplyDelete