The Remains of the day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Audiobook
Running length around 7 hours
Genre- Fiction and Prose
Spoilers; None
Rating- 2/5 since I am not a big fan of such Murakami like novels!
This is one of those novels where the Journey is important rather than the story!
The vivid description of the events seen as mundane and normal to normal people like me is made into a novel which started so well!
Being a strong believer of closure, it is a very disappointing thing to me when there is none in the novel! The open ending is supposed to make the reader think and maybe re evaluate his or her life!
I mean, life is so unpredictable and the only place where we can predict or give an ending is a novel or a movie! When even that is taken away form us and left to our imaginations, it is really frustrating!
In one word you can tell the novel is a serious version of P G Wodehouse’s classic Jeeves! The work of a butler and the knowledge and seriousness involved has been told very well in the novel which probably is the saving grace!
So after stories and memories and narration of the life of a butler, you are presented with the ending which frankly makes me feel Murakamised! That is what I call when the ending is sudden and there is no closure!
People who are reading literature would love this one and may come behind me with pitchforks! But with all the stories and incidents told in the novel, there is not one story or instance which gets a proper closure! Be it his own life as a Butler, his job of explaining the Bird and bees!, his father and what happens with him and finally his associate.
Even thoughts about his masters is left for open interpretation! So the reader has to do most of the work!
Of course these are the novels which go on to win the Booker Prize and stuff while the average reader like me is left with thinking where to stuff that book…er!
Till the very end though, it was a simple enough story which does keep you giving some attention and you can get to know that the Butler is made of a heart of stone with no emotion and his whole life he wants to be the best butler as if that is the best job in the world! If what he did or does is right or not is up to you to read and suffer…I mean infer!
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