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Always love hearing other people enjoying Remains of the Day. I never would have picked it up in the first place if I knew that it was "about" a butler reflecti

Always love hearing other people enjoying Remains of the Day. I never would have picked it up in the first place if I knew that it was "about" a butler reflecting on their career. But it has ended up being one of my favourite books of all time. You should maybe try some other Ishiguro work. He has quite a lot of sci-fi adjacent stuff but he uses the speculative elements in a very interesting way that would not really be seen in traditional sci-fi where the speculative elements are often quite background and tacitly accepted by the characters and serve (as I take it) as more of a way of focusing attention on something emotive which is the true point of the book. Some people don't care for Never Let Me Go, but it made an impression on me almost as large as Remains of the Day did.

epiccoleman 3y ago
> I never would have picked it up in the first place if I knew that it was "about" a butler reflecting on their career. Absolutely same here, and as a matter of fact I did not know this when I first picked it up. All I knew going in was that it was "good" and that the ending made one of the podcast hosts cry. It is a seriously beautiful book, I wish I was able to put into words all that I feel about it. It's got a sort of meta-layer - the events in the book just sort of pass by without much time for deep reflection by the protagonist. And the way they are described is similarly without much ceremony or reflection, so that by the end you are left with the same feeling as the butler - just this kind of sadness and feeling that things have passed by, irrevocably, to time. I definitely plan to read more of his work - but now that I've experienced Remains of the Day I am almost hesitant. Sort of like when you hear a really sad song that touches you enough to make you cry - it's beautiful, but my instinct is sometimes to flinch away from stuff that makes me feel that hard. (Maybe I ought to draw a lesson from Stevens about that...)

epiccoleman 3y ago

> I never would have picked it up in the first place if I knew that it was "about" a butler reflecting on their career. Absolutely same here, and as a matter of fact I did not know this when I first picked it up. All I knew going in was that it was "good" and that the ending made one of the podcast hosts cry. It is a seriously beautiful book, I wish I was able to put into words all that I feel about it. It's got a sort of meta-layer - the events in the book just sort of pass by without much time for deep reflection by the protagonist. And the way they are described is similarly without much ceremony or reflection, so that by the end you are left with the same feeling as the butler - just this kind of sadness and feeling that things have passed by, irrevocably, to time. I definitely plan to read more of his work - but now that I've experienced Remains of the Day I am almost hesitant. Sort of like when you hear a really sad song that touches you enough to make you cry - it's beautiful, but my instinct is sometimes to flinch away from stuff that makes me feel that hard. (Maybe I ought to draw a lesson from Stevens about that...)