This is my first Kazuo Ishiguro and I’m still mulling it over, always the sign of a book that is going to stick with me. There’s a light plot in The Remains of the Day, but most of it is a character study and an examination of what it means to give your life totally to a vocation. The narrator, Stevens, is a great English butler still recovering from his old employer’s death and trying to come to terms with moving into the last phase […]
A double cannonball to contemplate
What a subtle, poignant, sad book. In post-WWII England, Stevens, a butler of a formerly great aristocratic house takes a road trip through the country and has the opportunity to reflect on his tenure of servitude. Through these memories — many with another employee, Miss Kenton — Stevens sketches a life left rather unlived through the endless pursuit of dignity, that intangible, elite quality embodied by the foremost butlers. What is dignity? No one can put it into words, not even Stevens, but based on […]
If “Waiting for Godot” were written by T.H. White
This novel did not benefit by the way I read it—in fits and starts over the last few weeks. It has a dreamy and fantastic tone, but I just couldn’t get emotionally invested in it. As a result, it felt more “sloggy” to me than I would have liked. There are parts of it that I found intriguing, but mostly I felt like I was reading a variation on Waiting for Godot—people talking and talking and waiting for something that never seems to come. Ishiguro […]
Five Ishiguro tales about the human experience…and music
These are five lovely stories which all deal with very vulnerable individuals and the critical role of music in their lives. Ishiguro’s tales embrace a wide range of life’s challenges, from loss and loneliness to romance and recovery, to friendship and fulfillment. The recurrence of certain characters from one story to another lends a hint of continuity, almost like a piece of music with five movements and an occasionally recurrent theme. In one story, an aging singing legend takes his beloved on a final trip […]
Bittersweet, Melancholy, and Haunting
There are only a handful of novels that have made me want to cry in order to purge myself of the myriad emotions upon reaching the conclusion. I’m not a crier. Unless it’s weddings, graduations, and sports events. But after reading this book I really envy my wife who can cry for five minutes wipe her eyes and move on with life. Not so with me. After shutting the book, or most likely tossing it across the room out of sheer madness for making me […]
Maybe someday…
I am WAY in the minority with this one, I know, but it is not for me. I hesitated before writing anything about it, because I didn’t even finish it. I was fairly involved for about 50 pages, less so for maybe 50 more, and finally gave up about 3/4 in when I realized not only did I not care what happened, but also didn’t even find it particularly interesting. Probably, if I owned this, it would sit on the nightstand for a few weeks, […]
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