Remains of the Day

Megan Carlson
Jul 23, 2017 · 3 min read

I read Remains of the Day from Kazuo Ishiguro in 2012 and instantly considered it a favorite. Five years later, I’ve reached the same conclusion.

The novel, told in a diary-like format, follows British butler, Stevens, as he a road trips through the English countryside and recalls his days preceding the second world war in the illustrious house of Lord Darlington.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

As he relives his past, unpleasant truths bubble up. Liiiiiike, hmmm, I don’t know…that the boss he extolled was a Nazi sympathizer. Or that his bestie housekeeper had the hots for him, but he was too busy with Butler Stuff to notice.

I make light of it, but the book is a beautiful and quietly tragic study of perception and memory. As a reader, you witness Stevens’ mental gymnastics as he tries to justify his past decisions and eventually faces — if only in brief glimpses — what his relentless pursuit of an undefined “Dignity” has cost him.

“But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way. In any case, while it is all very well to talk of ‘turning points’, one can surely only recognize such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one’s life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one’s relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable.”

I’m in awe of Ishiguro’s ability to create a narrator who is simultaneously unreliable and sympathetic. Stevens regularly mis-remembers, projects, and flat-out lies to himself. Yet, the character’s motivations are clear. Stevens wants nothing more than to be a great butler. He is honored by his Lord Darlington’s attentions, so he ignores his employer’s more insidious affairs (see above: Nazi). He doesn’t want to admit his father is aging, so he ignores his many blunders as under-butler at Darlington Hall. He regrets not pursuing his one true love, so he invents the idea that she is unhappy in marriage as an excuse to drive across the country to visit her. It’s a relate-able phenomenon: We tell ourselves the things we want to hear, and try to protect our fragile egos from the truth.

Or maybe, I just have sympathy for oblivious dudes on the spectrum.

Either way, read this book. A+++.

Next time:

More on perception and things unspoken, along with some Feminst-y stuff, in To The Lighthouse.

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Megan Carlson

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Writer, Thinker, Real-Talker

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I’m spending a year only reading books that I have already read. Join me as I wade through high school English staples, beloved classics, and Shit-I-Read-Too-Fast.

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