Mr Stevens is chief of staff at an English stately home as the novel opens, in the summer of 1956, he is set to undertake a motoring trip to visit Miss Kenton, a housekeeper who left 20 years earlier to get married. Kazuo Ishiguro’s subtle masterpiece about the private agonies of an ageing butler is hardly unknown – it won the 1989 Booker prize, after all – but sometimes you find a piece of writing so well executed, so moving and so perceptive about the lives many of us lead that you can’t help praising it to anyone not quick-witted enough to look busy.Ī lack of restraint is perhaps the best response to Ishiguro’s novel, which is the tale of a man so burdened by propriety that he lets the love of his life slip through his fingers. Over the years since I read it, I’ve turned into a Remains of the Day evangelist. Some have already had a copy thrust upon them as a gift. Some of my friends and family might roll their eyes if they see this – they’ve heard my spiel about The Remains of the Day too many times.
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