Remains of the Day

Based on the description, I was skeptical that I would enjoy The Remains of the Day. But after watching the film adaptation, reading the source matter felt necessary. Seeing the movie first was both a pro and a con, as I had the delightful voices of Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson to pull me into the narrative, but it meant that those were the only voices I heard throughout the book. Either way, the book, understandably, has room to give the characters more depth, especially our narrator Stevens. The early passages seem mired in trivia, but the story's significance gradually sneaks up on the reader. This is a brilliantly crafted novel.

This is the second of Ishiguro's I've read (the other was Klara and the Sun), and I'm struck with how much his characters love to revel in tedium. In this book, it's done to comedic effect often (since the narrator is obsessed with the details of what makes a "good butler" or what counts as "dignity"). But it then surprisingly dips into a love story and Nazi sympathizers. The book is deep in the weeds of something that seems ridiculous while all of these other more important things are happening around the edges. In the end, it works.

I didn't start getting into the story until around the 40% mark and even then, I felt like I had to make myself read it. If it hadn't been a book club pick, it'd probably be a DNF. I'm glad I stuck with it until the end. It was worth it from a literary and historical standpoint. But that ending felt incredibly depressing to me and I'm not sure it was meant to be? Was there meant to be little to no growth of the main character? Did he grow, but my own views are just so vastly different I can't see it? I have a lot of feelings to think about before my book club's discussion. 

I mean, I'd say it's a 2.5 and I'll let it barely round up to 3.0. It's basically just a guy talking about his butler days. I expected it to be more profound.