A masterpiece of unreliable narration

First time I tried reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s “The Remains of the Day” (winner of '89 Booker prize) I didn’t finish it. Sometimes I can be a really impatient reader, someone whom as a writer I would fear. But I was bored. I couldn’t see any point in the long monologues of the main character on the virtues and hardships of a butler’s life. So after fifty or so pages I put the book back on a shelf. Dust started gathering on its thin spine.

I don’t remember who told me to give the novel another try. Whoever it was - I listened to him - and it was worth it.

“Remains of the day” is an amazing book - a narrative of a person who is emotionally blocked to a degree when he has no idea what motivates him and whom he really is. A masterpiece example of an unreliable narration in fiction (naive world view of Huckleberry Finn in Twain’s novel comes to mind, or the narrator in Agatha Christie’s “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd”). “Remains of the day” is actually two books in one - a story that Stevens (the main character) wants as to hear, and another one, that emerges from between the lines: a sad, touching, powerful story of his deeply hidden emotions. Even in the most dramatic of scenes (his father’s death, to mention one) Stevens remains extremely composed and pragmatic. And only from other people’s reaction the reader can see what he really feels:

“I felt something touch my elbow and turned to find Lord Darlington.

Stevens are you all right?
Yes, sir. Perfectly.
You look as though you are crying.

I laughed and taking out a handkerchief quickly wiped my face. ‘I’m very sorry, sir. The strains of a hard day.’”

It’s a book about things that seemingly simple can become impossible when people cannot communicate with each other. When feelings instead of being shared are deeply hidden, burrowed under layers and layers of “musts”, “shoulds” and “can’ts”. And that sometimes it’s too late for change.