Title: The Remains of the Day
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 258
Rating: 4/5
This is my second Ishiguro book, and both of them have messed with my brain. Never Let Me Go made me think about society and technology in a way that I never had before, but The Remains of the Day hit me in a very different way.
See, the most interesting part of this novel is the way in which it looks at the passing of one generation and the coming of another, as well as what it looked like to be a member of the British upper class (or those serving them) in the early part of the 20th century.
Ishiguro did such a great job of showcasing this that I found it hard to believe anyone alive today could have done it. It read like something co-written by Graham Greene and D. H. Lawrence, with a sort of quintessential Englishness that belongs to a bygone age. It made me feel nostalgic, even though it was for a time that I’d never lived in.
There’s more to the novel, of course, including an interesting look at the rarely talked about phenomenon of British Nazi sympathisers ahead of and during the Second World War, but I can’t cover it all here. I’m hoping that I’ve given you a good idea of the vibe, because that’s all you really need. Like Never Let Me Go, it works better if you go in blind.
