I finished the book today and it was absolutely amazing. I loved Ishiguro’s writing style and the whole reading experience was buttery smooth. There were a few emotionally powerful moments where I had to pause, but for the most part I surprisingly couldn’t put the book down, even though it wasn’t action packed or particularly fast-paced. Although there weren’t many literary descriptions of the house and the sceneries, I had no trouble following the road trip and flashbacks vicariously and just letting my imagination fill in all the blanks.
That being said, in my opinion the narrator, our “great butler” Mr Stevens was a deeply flawed character. I went into this book entirely blind and almost from the very beginning I had a hunch that Stevens was an unreliable narrator. As a character he appeared insensitive, somewhat snobbish, and took himself too seriously. He also seemed to have trouble identifying/accepting his own emotions which in my view was a sign of low emotional intelligence (for lack of a better word). Additionally there were a few moments where I sensed slight misogyny (though I could be reading too much into it), which surprised me because admittedly I’m quite obtuse when it comes to such things in real life.
Maybe my judgment of his character was unfair, given that the story presumably took place in the mid 20th century (?) and my own cultural background is quite different from a British one, let alone a British one from the 1940s-50s. Therefore I’m very curious about what other people think of Stevens. Did you like or dislike him? Why?
by LittleIf