Review: The Remains of the Day (by Kazuo Ishiguro)

My Rating: 4.5 stars rounded up to 5 stars

I struggle to write this review because honestly, I'm at a loss for words at the moment.  So perhaps let me backtrack and talk first about why I chose to read this book in the first place.  One of my Goodreads challenges this year is the A to Z Author Challenge where I need to read a book by an author whose (last) name starts with each letter of the alphabet.  The last letter I needed in order to complete this challenge was the letter "I" and after changing my choice a few times, I decided to read a work by an author I had heard plenty about but up to this point hadn’t had the opportunity to experience for myself yet.  Of course, that author is none other than our newly crowned Nobel Laureate, Kazuo Ishiguro.  I’ve known about his masterpiece The Remains of the Day since the 90s and I’m pretty sure I even saw the movie way back when too, but I had never read the book, primarily because it had never been assigned as required reading in any of the literature classes I had taken back then (those were the days where rarely anyone read classics for leisure and so most exposure to classics was through school/classroom setting).  It has been nearly two decades since I’ve been out of the "school" environment and now I can finally say that I’ve read this book – most importantly though, I didn’t just read the book, I actually enjoyed it too!

I’m actually not sure what else I can say about this book that others haven’t already said.  Beautiful, wonderful, brilliant, subtle, multi-layered, philosophical, thought-provoking...these are just some of the words I’ve heard used to describe this book and I absolutely agree with all of them!  Ishiguro is a masterful writer and the way he was able to render the narrative so beautifully, yet subtly, with everything that was not said being equally as important as what was said – very few authors have the ability to utilize language in such a way as to make a story so philosophical and subdued in nature still be so enthralling.  This book definitely left me with much food for thought, so much so in fact that I’m still kind of speechless, hence the rambling nature of this review, as I really don’t know where to start in terms of putting down my thoughts, so I think I will keep it brief and instead just encourage everyone to read this book.  I also think this is a book that needs to be read more than once -- slowly, thoughtfully -- in order to truly understand and appreciate its brilliance.  For me, this was an excellent read with which to end the year (and also complete my challenge) but no doubt I will be coming back to this book again some time in the near future and hopefully at that time, the words won’t escape me again and I will be better able to express the myriad of thoughts going through my mind after finishing this wonderful masterpiece!