The Remains of the Day

     Kazuo Ishiguro

                

This novel is quintessentially English. As I started reading this book, I found myself saying aloud in my head - this is so Jane Austen. I must add here I love Austen. I absolutely love her writing style.

Reading through Ishiguro, however, was more like an ordeal which even the writing, which is undeniably beautiful, didn’t help much to overcome. I read through the entire book because it was a birthday gift and came with a high recommendation.

For some reason I cannot still wrap my head around what it was exactly that didn’t appeal to me. Peter Beech in his review of the book in The Guardian says:

“I can’t imagine readers in more gregarious nations will have much patience with a protagonist who takes four decades to fail to declare his feelings. “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way,” as Pink Floyd sang. It’s a book for anyone who feels they’ve ever held themselves back when something that truly mattered was within their grasp.”

Maybe, I think, I came to this book at wrong time. If I had come earlier to this in life, maybe it would have appealed to me differently. Now, I think I am at a point where I realize life is too short to just let it go like that, too short to romanticise a notion and just waste it away. After reading this book, nothing in my heart stirred up for Steven though I really tried to empathize with him. I felt nothing. And that’s what troubled me.

PS. Couldn't rate this one.