The Remains of the Day

I wanna stand outside the room where it happensThe room where it happens, the room where it happens...

Heh.

The Remains of the Day took me a long time to get into. I thought the pacing was so slow, and while reading the first half, every time I picked it up I started to fall asleep. I get why it was told in its way, but I wanted to get a feeling – ANY feeling! – from Stevens. He wanted to spend his life chasing dignity and serving great men, but never questioned whether the men he served were worthy of his reverence. His life made me sad; he couldn't spare an emotion for anyone, even when his own father died, and instead of thinking about what that meant, I started thinking about how we would diagnose Stevens 100 years after the setting of this book.

I liked Miss Kenton, and I think that's when it started picking up for me, when she became a larger part of the narrative. She at least had some kind of passion/feeling, even if Stevens couldn't really express it (and Remains is entirely told through his perspective). I knew Ishiguro was not going to suddenly turn this stilted, proper English story into a bodice-ripper, but I picked up immediately that there was something between Miss Kenton and Stevens, even if it was mutual frustration with each other. (And of course, I was right, what with Stevens meeting Miss Kenton nee Mrs. Benn all those years later, and her wondering what could have been if she had spent her life with him instead of marrying her husband.) But compared to other reviews, I don't know that I really believe that anything changed for Stevens after that final meeting - I don't really think Stevens had some big revelation, other than he's getting old. The world changes, and he doesn't, or maybe he will consider changing, maybe.

He is frustrating to me because he is both so simple and surprisingly complicated at the same time, but it's all interior and hard to describe.

So anyway, I read it, I definitely liked the second half better than the first, and this was good but I didn't especially enjoy it. 3.5 stars.