“The Remains of the Day” is subtle and beautiful, best appreciated on the second reading. Kazuo Ishiguro deftly weaves the themes of dignity, honour and heartbreak into a period of history that was wrought with tension and political duality. His masterful use of pacing and structure is invisible to the reader as we are introduced to the fascinating mind of Stevens, a loyal and long-serving butler at the fictional Darlington Hall.

“The Remains of the Day” won the Booker Prize and was adapted into a film nominated for eight Academy Awards.

Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the most critically acclaimed contemporary fiction authors in the English Language. His debut, “A Pale View of Hills” was awarded the Winifred Holtby Prize by the Royal Society of Literature and his second novel, “An Artist of the Floating World” won the Whitbread Book of the Year. He was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Born in Japan, Kazuo Ishiguro moved with his parents to England at age five. He attended grammar school and took a gap year before moving on to study at the University of Kent and the University of East Anglia, where he was awarded a Master of Arts in 1980. His first two novels were set in a place he describes as “an imaginary Japan”. He did not return to his homeland for thirty years after he left and he says his early novels were based on the Japan he imagined as a child: A distant place that he had a strong emotional connection to, even though he had little memory of it. He says that growing up in a Japanese family in the UK enabled him to write with a different perspective to his peers. He has a heart for the outsider navigating a world that is foreign, which can result in a deeper and more emotional experience of the world itself.

“The Remains of the Day” opens with Stevens, the protagonist, being encouraged by the new owner of Darlington Hall to go on a trip around the English Countryside for the first time. As he travels he reminisces about his experience working as a butler for the original owner, Lord Darlington. His inner world is unveiled in tantalizing glimpses in his exploration of the countryside as well as his inner world. Stevens likens the quiet dignity of the English Countryside to that of the English Butler who carries on with dignity, no matter the circumstance.

“it is the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land apart. What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, of its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it.”

It is this very dignity, this restraint, that becomes the cause of some of Stevens’ most significant personal losses and possibly his greatest regrets. He retains such a dignified level of control over his emotions that we wonder if he will ever allow himself to feel at all. The beauty of Kazuo Ishiguro’s writing is that it lets the reader in to Stevens’ emotional world, perhaps more meaningfully than the protagonist himself. Emotion is conveyed in the smallest of physical gestures and in everything that remains unsaid.

“the great decisions of the world are not , in fact, arrived at simply in the public chambers… Rather, debates are conducted, and crucial decisions arrived at, in the privacy and calm of the great houses of this country.”

Stevens is so single minded, so focused on maintaining his impeccable service as a butler to Lord Darlington, that he remains blissfully unaware of the political ambitions of Darlington and his guests. He is ignorant of the fact that his master has become a pawn in the hands of the Nazi Regime, and an effective one. His eyes are fixed on the fact that he, as Butler to Lord Darlington, is a facilitator of “…a wheel, revolving with these great houses at the hub, their mighty decisions emanating out to all else, rich and poor, who revolved around them.” It is from this role that he derives his importance, his purpose and his self worth, and it is to this role that he returns when all else fails. 

The social commentary is powerful, but giving the reader the ability to step into Stevens’ inner life is the real triumph of “The Remains of the Day”

Kazuo Ishiguro’s writing comes into its own in the final chapter as we are taken into the heart of Stevens’ profound sense of loss. The entire chapter is a thing of beauty, with the outcome leaving us, at least, with some hope that Stevens will be able to find happiness in what remains of the day.

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