Latest Read: Remains of the Day

This is one of those well-regarded, Booker Prize-winning books that I should have read a long time ago. I've owned a copy long enough, and plucking it from the shelf two days ago is part of my end-of-the-month and still-owe-the-music-camp-money poverty. Much is made to clothing accumulators of shopping one's closet these days, but as a book accumulator, I shop instead my bookshelves for books that I own but haven't yet read. 

I should not have waited so long to read this marvelous book and yet, as often happens with book procrastinations, this was possibly the best time in my life for me to read it. A convalescent lethargia offered the ideal mental climate for this slow, quiet narrative, clearly inflected with a very Edwardian-Modernist nostalgia, though not of the romanticized John Betjeman sort, mind you. Something darker, but still sepia-toned (as is appropriately the cover of my copy, printed obviously before the "movie tie-in's" featuring the now young-ish looking Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson).  

The most captivating aspect of the book is the way that the narrator, Stevens, reveals himself to the reader long before revealing himself to himself.  Through his words and reminiscences, the reader sees him to be quite a different man than he believes himself to be.  Even by the end, when he glimpses something of the truth, he doesn't seem to let it sink in long enough to do anything with the realization, either because it's too painful to accept, or because he believes it is too late to do anything about it, or both. In any case, there's something delightful from a reader's standpoint in seeing the unfolding of this man's (and his late employer's) true nature, when he himself--in the revelation--fails to see it. This, I believe, is Ishiguro's true accomplishment here. This revelatory non-revelation is extremely subtle, and not in any way the heavy-handed narrative equivalent of someone unknowingly trailing toilet paper from his shoe on his way out of the men's room. This narrator is, actually, somewhat reflective, and, one might say, even self-reflective. But he is so selective about those subjects of reflection, that he clearly has walled off from consciousness--again, until much later in the novel, and then only briefly--those personal qualities and life decisions that have shaped the direction of (and some might even say, ruined) his entire life.  

Despite this book's somber tone and, at times, dark subjects, it uses humor well, and unexpectedly.  Ishiguro finds ways, even in moments of tension or sadness, to insert something funny--which, again, the narrator--although the vehicle of the humor, seems to miss completely (therefore adding another layer of humor).  For example, in one scene near the end of the novel, when the stoic, stolid narrator shows at last some welcome emotion and is offered a handkerchief, Ishiguro undercuts what could have come off as a maudlin moment with humor: "'Oh dear, mate. Here, you want a hankie?  I've got one somewhere.  Here we are. It's fairly clean. Just blew my nose once this morning, that's all. Have a go, mate.'" Oddly enough, just a few lines later follows one of the most earnest monolouges of the entire novel, and rather than taking away from it, this funny bit makes it more genuine than it might have seemed otherwise. 

Part of what makes this character so believable (in addition to the touches of humor, often at the narrator's expense) is the way that he cloaks his emotional laziness (or fear, or both; this novel's simple plot belies psychological complexity) in professional duty, or as Stevens says, "dignity." Signs that things are not as they appear to be (regarding his employer, his father, his colleague Miss Kenton and himself) go completely unreckoned with at the occasions of their emergence, and are considered only superficially, decades later, during this narrative.  Another true-to-life characteristic of Stevens is the way that he gives another of the book's characters, Mrs. Benn (nee, Miss Kenton), advice that he himself should take, and needs.  Does the narrator realize that the advice he is giving is best meant for himself, and find that giving it to another is the only way that he can accept it, or, is Ihsiguro using irony here in having his character unknowingly (and therefore somewhat comically) pass along the knowledge that he most needs?  It's hard to say. Similarly, it is only late in the novel when comments made much earlier, like this one fewer than 50 pages in, reveal their actual object: "At this very moment, no doubt, she is pondering with regret decisions made in the far-off past that have now left her, deep in middle-age, so alone and desolate." Who, indeed, is really "alone" and "desolate?"

This is a beautiful book, which undoubtedly has inspired many people to follow in real life the travel route that Stevens takes through Ishiguro's capably painted English countryside. But it is also a thoughtful book about the consequences of wanting to see people as better than they are, not cutting our losses, the fear of feelings, the way life can lull us into disregarding the significances of things as they happen, and the price we might pay later, if we do.