From the Bookshelf of Around the World in 80 Books…

The Remains of the Day

Kazuo Ishiguro

Start date: January 15, 2015

Finish date: February 15, 2015

Discussion: Group Reads Discussions

Find A Copy At

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 405 topics — 3,825 comments total

Group Reads Discussions

This topic has been closed to new comments.

* Links to Group Read Discussions
By Diane , Armchair Tour Guide · 3 posts · 1370 views

last updated Jan 18, 2013 07:12PM

I've Been Waiting
By Carole · 1 post · 14 views

last updated Sep 16, 2025 07:57PM

showing 10 of 38 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Jul 04, 2015 Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance rated it it was amazing

Shelves: relationships, the-classics-club, favorites

You will not find a character who feels more real, a character who is not likely to resemble anyone who will ever meet in modern life than the main character of this novel. He is a classic English butler, deeply flawed, completely devoted to his job to the exclusion of family or friends, and he is unable to feel for others and he has trouble interpreting others’ emotions. Nevertheless, the reader falls in love with him, and can’t help feeling strongly compassionate for his lost opportunities.

It ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

Jul 02, 2018 Lisa of Hopewell rated it liked it

Shelves: 1001-books-to-read-before-you-di, read-in-2018, bbc-novels-shaped-our-world-2019, booker-prize, nobel-prize-for-lit

The Story

Once the butler to an appeasing-isolationist, pro-Nazi aristocrat, Stevens, takes a short vacation at the suggestion of his new employer, an American. The changes to Stevens life and world at Darlington Hall, the house his new employer bought complete with staff, are forcing him to make-do with post-war levels of staffing in a house built for a small village to labor in it. A letter from the former housekeeper provides the idea for the journey he takes in a car loaned by the new employe The Story

Once the butler to an appeasing-isolationist, pro-Nazi aristocrat, Stevens, takes a short vacation at the suggestion of his new employer, an American. The changes to Stevens life and world at Darlington Hall, the house his new employer bought complete with staff, are forcing him to make-do with post-war levels of staffing in a house built for a small village to labor in it. A letter from the former housekeeper provides the idea for the journey he takes in a car loaned by the new employer. Along the way, he discovers a bit about life outside “service” and outside the big country houses, he has long labored in.

His topic of thought and of the memories. as well as of the conversations he has along the way, are all on dignity–specifically how dignity makes a butler great. Dignity takes him many places in his memories, but especially to his father–himself a butler in another great house before his ignominious end. The back-in-the-day flirtations of the former housekeeper are also seen by Stevens as beneath the dignity of the butler. This keeps him from encouraging or acknowledging her acts at the time and we are given the sense that he has regret about this, though he never says so.,

But dignity combines with pride and he allows himself the egotism of not disavowing strangers of their notion that he is a great gentleman of public affairs. As this refuses to occur to him, the knowledge that Lord Darlington isn’t who he wanted him to try to rear its ugly head and penetrate his consciousness, but he keeps tamping it down again.

Remains of the Day [film]
My Rating

It’s difficult not to give a great rating to a book that wins prestigious awards. But I found Stevens so full of himself that it was difficult at times to go on. That, I’m sure, was part of the author’s point though!

That day, that “class” of servant, the man who might have taken elocution lessons to improve his “station” in life were a thing of the past even in the era in which the story is set. The great houses would soon mostly be lost to the National Trust or worse due to horrendous death duties as well as to greater employment opportunities in factories, shops, and offices. In 1900 1.5 million people were employed as domestic servants (https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-195...). That’s one in three employed persons (https://www.jstor.org/stable/25580932...). After the war live-in servants became rare, and the daily cleaner or “char” replaced the live-in maid. Stevens, like the house he’d run, was virtually an anachronism.
4.0 ...more

1 like · Like · see review