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Like many of my contemporaries I watched the Merchant Ivory film made from this novel when it came out years ago, but I wanted to take this in as an unabridged audiobook of the Booker Prize winning novel. I was already listening to another audiobook at the same time, but once I started this one it grabbed me so completely I just wanted to listen through to the end. The evocation of the inner life of the main character, Mr. Stevens, through very precise diction is simply masterful, along with the switches between the recollections from the pre-war episodes and the narrator's present-day were deft and illuminating. Stevens is the most polished sounding unreliable narrator imaginable, voiced perfectly by Nicholas Guy Smith in the audiobook version with just enough inflection to guide the listener to the meaning that likes just behind the words. The film concentrates most on the unrequited love between him and the Miss Kenton character, but in the book even more time is devoted to the Anglo-German relations in the lead-up to World War II, with lots of intrigue and secrets. Stevens evaluates what he has done all his life by the end of it, which hits home for me now that I'm of a similar age to what he would have been, and seeing that things might have turned out happier, has to conclude that it doesn't matter because the past cannot be changed, decisions that were taken cannot be unmade. He spent so much his time suppressing emotion that it cannot make sense to try to salvage emotion at the end. I found the novel to be moving.

Felt a bit annoyed trough out the book by the tone of the narrator (Mr. Stevens the buttler), but that's probably a fault of mine. I've never accepted blind servitude the likes of lords had with their staff.
In the end this is a book about choices in life and how we sometimes are carried away without much thought. It makes you think about your life's choices, the options you took in favour of others less obvious.
It's written beautifully and takes you back in time, a time and place where dignity was something to uphold.
It's a 4.5 rounded up ☺️

I didn't start getting into the story until around the 40% mark and even then, I felt like I had to make myself read it. If it hadn't been a book club pick, it'd probably be a DNF. I'm glad I stuck with it until the end. It was worth it from a literary and historical standpoint. But that ending felt incredibly depressing to me and I'm not sure it was meant to be? Was there meant to be little to no growth of the main character? Did he grow, but my own views are just so vastly different I can't see it? I have a lot of feelings to think about before my book club's discussion. 

I mean, I'd say it's a 2.5 and I'll let it barely round up to 3.0. It's basically just a guy talking about his butler days. I expected it to be more profound.

The novel is a serene one in temperament. I liked Ishiguro's prose and enjoyedthe book very much.


Stevens, as a character is a curious one. He is a hollow man but neither because he lacks intelligence nor sensitivity. His hollowness is a cultivated one. One that he took as a professional quality. Everything happen around him but nothing to him.