The Remains of the Day: A

It is the rare novelist that can turn even the most mundane of life's events into a tale of resplendent force. Stevens, the central character in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, has been a butler for many years. He has served only two prominent masters: Lord Darlington (who owned the residence that Stevens currently works at, Darlington Hall) and Mr. Farraday - the man who hired Stevens after Lord Darlington's death. On a whim Stevens decides that he will inquire as to the employment status of a former housekeeper, Mrs. Kenton, and perhaps see if she is interested in returning to the grand old mansion. When given the leave to do so, he sets off on a five-day journey to bring him back into contact with a long lost friend. Along the way perhaps he will sample some of the famous sights that are visibile in his homeland but that he has never seen.

Ishiguro is writing solely with that narrative thread in mind. Or at least, it would seem so. Armed with as much wisdom and compassion as he had in 2005's chilling Never Let Me Go, his sublimely well-paced tale races off the page - as any good confessional does. Yet it isn't an outright confession you are reading. After all, the butler hasn't done anything wrong has he? The answer, the graceful climax that results, is what drives you through his slim tale of a man revisiting his past on an innocuous vacation drive. His memories are sometimes uproarious, others are cruelly repressed. he narrator's thoughts themselves are as flawed as the memories he reflects on.

It is an indelible force of a character that has been written into this manswervant and the author wields his presence with a virtuostic skill. The haunting outward supernatural element is missing from this masterpiece as it wasn't from Never Let Me Go, but the result is something infinitely more paramount. Kazuo Ishiguro has taken T.S. Elliot's famous quote "the world ends not with a bang, but with a whimper" and scrambled it all to hell, creating perfection in the process.