Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Remains of the Day

“Don’t keep looking back all the time. You are bound to get depressed,” says a character to the protagonist, Stevens towards the end of this book. How true.

(As an interesting aside, in The Catcher In The Rye (my favourite book), Holden Caulfield mentions something similar about never telling anybody anything. It is going to make you feel said anyway)

Kazuo Ishiguro’s fine work set in post-First World War England, maintains a very English tempo all through the novel. Slow life, Idyllic scenery. Ordinary events. But overall an extraordinary work of tragic romance.

The book describes 6 days in the travels of a butler, Stevens - who’s encouraged by his employer to go see the outside world. The employer Mr. Farraday even offers to pay for the gas and offers his car, a splendid Ford for the adventure. Stevens uses the opportunity to try and settle some staffing matter in Darlington Hall, by visiting an old friend and ex-colleague Miss Kenton (then Mrs. Benn), in addition to exploring England, which he has never done in his life. The unfolding of the subsequent events is one fantastic tale of relationships of all sorts – Farraday and Stevens, Lord Darlington and Stevens, Stevens and Kenton, etc against the backdrop of British politics & society of the era. In fact the book even does discuss anti-Semitism.

Ishiguro excels at sketching out characters that tug at your heartstrings. You know the feeling when we were kids and were watching an action movie, where the hero is getting beaten up. We couldn’t wait to see what happens in the end - whether the hero gets the heroine in the end and manages to outwit the villains. That’s the feeling that one gets when one is reading “The Remains of the Day.” The protagonist, Stevens is the quintessential stiff upper lip – despite being only a butler. One would expect that a butler’s discretion is tested fairly frequently much like a chauffeur’s would be. Stevens, the “loyal & dignified” butler, keeps to himself, even while being challenged by the upstart Reginald Cardinal (Lord Darlington’s godson), who persuades him, in vain, to see his master’s follies. Stevens is also very tight lipped about his love for Miss Kenton, even till the very end. Miss Kenton, on the other hand does profess her affection for him more than once on different occasions in different forms, and finally explicitly when much water has flown under the bridge. Then there’s Stevens’ father, himself a butler, whom Stevens tries to emulate, to sometimes ridiculous limits. Then there are the sundry characters dotting the English countryside, that lend realism to the tale. What stays with the reader (apart from Stevens & Kenton) are two characters from the closing chapters of the book – a certain Dr. Carlisle, who offers some wisdom to Stevens and an unnamed gentleman, who gives the novel a fitting end, while trying to restore some parity to the life of the despairing Stevens. But one can’t help but have a drink to the life of Stevens, who does carry out much of his life, adhering to the norms of what a butler’s life must follow (according to the hallowed Hayes society and as demonstrated by the pillars of his profession) and uphold the values of the “diginified” profession.


The novel is a fine, tragic but romantic work. Must Read.

One can well imagine Anthony Hopkins as Stevens and Emma Thomson as Miss Kenton in the movie version. In fact one would expect that none other than Merchant-Ivory could have done justice to the movie. Let me write about it when I see the movie.

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