The Remains of the Day

This was just sort of quietly heartbreaking. I can say it was a good read; I don't know if I can say I enjoyed it.

It's the story of Stevens: master butler and relic of a bygone era, who served an English lord through two World Wars before the house, and what staff remain, transferred to a new American owner. He's a consummate professional, suborning all personal matters to the demands and dignities of his role.

On a rare – possibly only – vacation, Stevens finally has the leisure to reflect on his life. At first concerned wholly with his profession, his thoughts wander and he begins to peel back the years of his life, and layer upon layer of self- deception.

Often, Stevens' thoughts reveal to us as readers facts that he does not yet and might never realize himself. Front and center is his former master of the house, Lord Darlington. Stevens idolizes Darlington: as a butler he considers it his highest calling to serve a man so central to the halls of power in England. He considers Darlington above reproach, and as Darlington does foolish or even reprehensible things, he either makes excuses for the man, or else denies that it's even his place to judge. The most obvious is Darlington's hand in international politics. We slowly discover that Darlington is a Nazi sympathizer with fascist leanings; rather than acknowledge these failings, Stevens decides that Darlington knows better than his detractors. After all, Darlington is a great man.

This is hardly Darlington's only misstep. Darlington orders Stevens to dismiss the Jewish members of staff; the housekeeper, Miss Kenton, objects strenuously, and demands that Stevens recognize the immorality of the order, but Stevens resolves the cognitive dissonance by recusing himself from considering the matter. It is not his to reason: Darlington has made his wishes clear, and there's nothing more to say.

Miss Kenton, of course, is the other central figure in Stevens' life. She is representative of all that Stevens has failed to do: directly, as a potential romantic interest clearly interested in him as he is in her, and indirectly, as the conscience Stevens will not permit himself.

The motoring trip, as Stevens' first real extended time away from Darlington Hall, is a horrorshow of these revelations for Stevens. He slowly realizes that he's wasted his life: he pegged the entire value thereof to his service to a great man, only to discover in his twilight years – when his professional capabilities are beginning to desert him, as his father's did – that that man wasn't so great after all. There's still so much he hasn't come to grips with when the story draws to a close: his feelings for Mrs Benn (neé Kenton), the fundamental insufficiency of his world view – after all, he still has the same slavish devotion to his profession, he merely regrets the decisions of his previous employer.

By the end Stevens has grasped some of the inadequacies of the actors in his worldview, but come precious little closer to grasping the inadequacy of the worldview itself. Crushing.