Review: The Remains of the Day
Stevens, the butler at Darlington Hall, takes a short motoring trip across the English countryside and tells us, in his careful and dignified way, about his life in service. What he tells us and what we understand are two quite different stories, and the space between them is where the whole novel lives.
Ishiguro's control is astonishing. Stevens never once says what he feels, and yet by the time he sits on a pier in Weymouth at the end, you know exactly what it has cost him.
Who it's for: readers who like novels where the most important things happen between the lines.