The Remains of the Day

The funny thing is that this whole book is so perfectly encapsulated in this Dostoevsky quote:
“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”

However, I can't agree with that.

The book, from a literary perspective, is absolutely outstanding. The writing is so crisp and clear. In other books, I often skip some passages that just lose my interest (cough, Dune, cough), but I felt engaged at all times while reading The Remains of the Day. The character development is just as phenomenal as Dostoevsky's. Emotional, moving, etc. etc. To put icing on the cake, the historical background related in the book made the amateur World War II historian in me exceedingly happy.

The only issue I have with this book is, well, its core message, as so perfectly summarized by Dostoevsky a century before it was written. Of course, if you see no issue at all with the quote, then by all means this is a must-read. Nonetheless, to me, the quote is nothing short of a fraud, however much I may profess my profound admiration for Dostoevsky. For there is no such thing as “one's own way.” “Your way” is already determined by your upbringing, by your nature. You are a deterministic function of your environment. As far as Stevens knew, all the way until that last evening in the end of the book, he was following his own way. He could never have known better. Still, I am glad he recognized that it's no good wallowing in melancholy for supposedly “failing to follow one's own way.”

Even though I rate it four stars out of philosophical disagreements, I can heartily recommend this book to anyone, whether you have such disagreements or not. As a final note, I imagine that the book is far more touching to those older than I am (having read The Remains of the Day at age 21). I will certainly be re-reading this book at least every decade of my life.