The Remains of the Day
SynopsisPlot
This is Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly compelling portrait of a butler named Stevens. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the "great gentleman," Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's "greatness," and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.
Story
About this book
In the summer of 1956, an English butler named Stevens sets out on a short motoring trip through the countryside. He has spent three decades in service at Darlington Hall, and the drive becomes an occasion for him to look back over those years. As the landscape passes, Stevens recalls his relationship with Lord Darlington, the employer whose moral standing he never questioned, and with Miss Kenton, the former housekeeper whose departure still occupies his thoughts.
Stevens tells his story in a careful, formal voice that reveals as much through what it avoids as through what it states. His memories circle around moments of political influence at Darlington Hall during the interwar period, when Lord Darlington hosted figures involved in Anglo-German diplomacy. Gradually, details surface that unsettle the butler's confident account of loyalty and professional duty.
Kazuo Ishiguro, born in Nagasaki and raised in England from the age of five, published the novel in 1989. The story is set entirely in England, but its questions about duty, self-deception, and the things people leave unsaid carry no particular nationality. Stevens measures his life by the standard of dignified service, and the tension of the book lies in whether that standard has cost him something he cannot recover.
