Book Review: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

What a beautiful, beautiful book! I loved the movie version, starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, many years ago when my boys were small. I remember seeing it twice in movie theaters -- once in Utah and once in Minneapolis while visiting my best friend. We drove to the movie theater on a January evening in sub-zero temperatures to see it. I don't think she loved it as much as I did.

But that's because (as you know from previous posts) I am one of the few people on the planet who is more entertained watching grass grow than watching action flicks. I can't explain it! But I guess I don't need to apologize for it, either. That's just who I am.

About ten years ago, my aunt recommended the book version of it to me, and I finally got around to reading it six months ago. I finished it tonight. (I can't explain that, either. I am a very, very slow reader. My daughter, Abby, says I don't read - I analyze.)

The book is about an English butler and a head housekeeper at an estate in England just before the onset of World War II. They are consummate professionals and very, very English, rarely betraying their personal feelings about anything. The author is a master of nuance. I found myself marveling that someone named Kazuo Ishiguro could write so convincingly about being an English butler.

Mr. Stevens, the butler, reflects on his long career and his indefinite future while traveling to meet Mrs. Benn, the former Miss Kent, who was once his employee. He hopes to convince her to rejoin the household now that her long marriage has come to an end. I won't tell you what happens.

But reading the book at this point in my life, when I am more than half-way done with my 'magnus opum' (raising a family), I was profoundly touched by Mr. Stevens' situation. He has given his all to Darlington Hall, contenting himself with 'the remains of the day' and the resultant accumulation of dignity.

Here are some passages I especially enjoyed from the book:

'One is not struck by the truth until prompted quite accidentally by some external event.'

'I distinctly felt that rare, yet unmistakeable feeling - the feeling that one is in the presence of greatness.'

'Dignity is something one can meaningfully strive for throughout one's career. Those 'great' butlers like Mr. Marshall who have it, I am sure, acquired it over many years of self-training and the careful absorbing of experience.'

'The great butlers are great by virtue of their ability to inhabit their professional role and inhabit it to the utmost; they will not be shaken out by external events, however surprising, alarming, or vexing. They wear their professionalism as a decent gentleman will wear his suit.'

'It was one of those events, which, at a crucial stage in one's development, arrive to challenge and stretch one to the limit of one's ability and beyond, so that thereafter one has new standards by which to judge oneself.'

'It was a 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. But I see I am becoming unduly introspective....'