The Remains of the Day

A good, fulfilling and purposeful life—a life well lived. At the end of the day, isn’t that all anyone wants? If you think an aging English butler would have little to teach you about how to live, you will be very surprised. Perhaps "teach" is not the right word, because we actually learn from his mistakes, subtly revealed as the facade of his perfectly ordered life is slowly pulled away. We see the opportunities he missed. Love lost. Time wasted. All in pursuit of "dignity," to be a loyal employee in service to a set of ideas and principles that, in the end, are not the right ones. And there are powerful lessons in the pain of regret we feel as our butler comes to realize—too late—that he’s been misled. The Remains of the Day is, without doubt, one of those books you must read before you die. More importantly, it is a book you should read with your life still ahead of you.

This is Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly compelling portrait of Stevens, the perfect butler, and of his fading, insular world in post-World War II England. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the "great gentleman," Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's "greatness," and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.